Ten years after its release, Bobby Rush’s GRAMMY®-winning Porcupine Meat returns in an expanded Deluxe Edition. Arriving digitally November 6, the anniversary release adds four tracks to the original album, led by the previously unreleased “Cried So Much for You,” a song penned by blues legend Elmore James and available to stream today.
Also joining the album are three performances recorded by Rush and his band for Philadelphia’s World Cafe radio program in 2016: “Got Me Accused,” “I Don’t Want Nobody Hanging Around,” and “Porcupine Meat.”
The expanded edition revisits a pivotal album in Rush’s extraordinary career. Released when he was 82, Porcupine Meat earned Rush his first GRAMMY® Award for Best Traditional Blues Album after more than six decades of writing, recording, touring, and building an audience largely on his own terms.
THE LONG ROAD TO PORCUPINE MEAT
By 2016, Bobby Rush had spent more than 60 years doing just about everything himself: booking gigs, maintaining relationships with clubs and promoters across the chitlin’ circuit, producing records, hustling them to radio stations, and even sometimes driving his own tour bus.
Born Emmet Ellis, Jr. in Homer, Louisiana, Rush moved as a teenager to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where he encountered blues originators including Elmore James. In 1953, he headed to Chicago just as the city’s electric blues sound was taking shape, crossing paths with Muddy Waters, Little Walter, and Jimmy Reed.
Rush developed a style that was distinctly his own, mixing blues with Southern soul, funk, humor, and showmanship. Songs including “Chicken Heads,” “Sue,” “Hoochie Man,” and “Bowlegged Woman, Knock-Kneed Man” appeared across major labels, Mississippi independents, and Rush’s own Deep Rush imprint.
After decades as an independent-minded artist, Rush signed with Rounder Records in 2015 as he watched his audience become increasingly international and diverse. His philosophy for the move was simple: “I crossed over, but I didn’t cross out.”
YELLOW LEGAL PADS AND A NEW ORLEANS BAND
Porcupine Meat began with Rush, producer Scott Billington, musical director and guitarist Vasti Jackson, and songwriter Johnette Downing working through songs at Jackson’s studio in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Rush arrived with stacks of yellow legal pads filled with lyrics and ideas, while Jackson turned those ideas into demos for the band.
Billington assembled a New Orleans lineup featuring guitarists Jackson and Shane Theriot, keyboardist David Torkanowsky, bassist Cornell Williams, Dirty Dozen Brass Band co-founder Kirk Joseph on sousaphone, and drummer Jeffery “Jellybean” Alexander.
Then, the night before the sessions began, Rush summoned Billington to his hotel and pulled out cassette demos of three more songs: “Porcupine Meat,” “Me, Myself and I,” and “Nighttime Gardener.” They made the record.
Much of Rush’s final singing and harmonica, along with the basic tracks, was captured live with the band at New Orleans’ Parlor studio. The setting gave Rush room to move away from the programmed beats and synth horns that had shaped many of his ’90s recordings while retaining the blues, funk, Southern soul, and humor his audience knew him for.
FINALLY, A GRAMMY
When Porcupine Meat arrived in 2016, Rush had already enjoyed the kind of career that would qualify anyone else as a blues legend. One milestone, however, was still missing.
In 2017, Porcupine Meat earned Rush his first GRAMMY® Award, winning Best Traditional Blues Album. It was more than six decades into his career. The record also took Album of the Year at the Blues Music Awards.
And it turned out to be the beginning of another chapter. Rush has since earned two more GRAMMY Awards, for 2020’s Rawer Than Raw and 2024’s All My Love For You.
LISTENING NOTES
“Porcupine Meat”
This is Bobby Rush distilled: funky, sly, funny, and immediately quotable. If you need one song to explain his particular brand of blues, start here.
“Funk O’ De Funk”
The title tells you what you’re getting. Rush digs into the groove and lets his humor loose, right down to the unforgettable “Mississippi donkey” line.
“Me, Myself and I”
One of those cassette demos Rush pulled out the night before recording began. That last-minute origin makes the finished track even more fun to hear.
“Cried So Much for You”
The newly unearthed Elmore James-penned track makes a particularly fitting addition given Rush’s history: he first encountered James as a teenager coming up in Arkansas.
“Porcupine Meat” (World Cafe Recording)
The studio cut tells you what Rush does. This 2016 performance lets you hear how naturally that combination of blues, funk, humor, and personality translates when the band is playing live.
STILL DOING IT HIS WAY
At 92, Rush hasn’t exactly settled into retirement. He continues to perform, recently made his Grand Ole Opry debut alongside Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and contributed harmonica to Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, where he also coached Delroy Lindo as the actor developed the character Delta Slim.
A full-length documentary, King of the Chitlin’ Circuit: Bobby Rush, also premiered in Mississippi in August 2026, adding another chapter to a story that has stretched from the clubs of the chitlin’ circuit to the GRAMMY stage.
Ten years after Porcupine Meat finally brought Rush his first GRAMMY, its expanded edition adds another piece to that story. The unheard Elmore James song reaches all the way back to his earliest blues influences, while the World Cafe recordings capture the artist he had become after six-plus decades on the road.
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