Thomas Walker Rush (born February 8, 1941) is an American folk and blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter who helped launch the careers of other singer-songwriters in the 1960s and has continued his own singing career for 60 years.
Rush was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, United States, the son of a teacher at St. Paul's School, in Concord, New Hampshire. He began performing in 1961 while studying at Harvard University, after having graduated from the Groton School. He majored in English literature. His early recordings include Southern and Appalachian folk or old-time country songs, Woody Guthrie ballads, and acoustic-guitar blues, such as Jesse Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues," which appeared on both of his first two LPs. He regularly performed at the Club 47 coffeehouse (now called Club Passim) in Cambridge, the Unicorn in Boston, and The Main Point in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. In the 1970s he lived in Deering, New Hampshire. As of 2023, Rush lives in the North Shore region of Massachusetts, not far from his New Hampshire birth place.
Rush is credited by Rolling Stone magazine with ushering in the era of the singer-songwriter. In addition to performing his own compositions, he sang songs by Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Murray McLauchlan, David Wiffen and William Hawkins, helping them to gain recognition early in their careers.
His 1968 composition "No Regrets" has become a standard, with numerous cover versions having been recorded (Rush did two radically different versions himself). These include The Walker Brothers, who gave Tom Rush Top Ten credit as a songwriter on the UK Singles Chart, Emmylou Harris, who included the song on her 1988 album Bluebird, and Midge Ure whose cover also made the UK Top Ten.
Links to Peel[]
Tom Rush was the most "modern" of Elektra Records' male folk artists of the 1960s, having included electric blues and rock'n'roll material in his second album for the label, Take A Little Walk With Me,[1] Its title was taken from the lyrics of the Bo Diddley song "Who Do You Love?" which became a Peel favourite in the version by the Misunderstood. Rush had built up a following in the UK, and recorded his session for Night Ride in January 1968 on a short visit to promote his Elektra LP, The Circle Game. The session and the album both include songs by the then little-known writers James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, as well as some early efforts by a teenage Jackson Browne.
Peel also did a telephone interview with the singer which was broadcast on his 22 May 1968 Night Ride show. After that; he didn't seem to pay much attention to Tom Rush's work, but in 1972 played a track from one of Rush's later LPs for CBS Records.
Tom Rush was unusual for his era, as he made his name as an interpreter of other people's songs rather than a singer-songwriter, but eventually he did begin to compose material of his own, most notably "No Regrets", which was included in his Peel session and also got some airplay on Top Gear and other Radio 1 shows when released as a single. Another self-composed track from The Circle Game, the instrumental "Rockport Sunday", was later covered on a Peel session by Michael Chapman.
Sessions[]
1. Recorded: 1968-01-10. First Broadcast: 21 January 1968
- Sunshine Sunshine / No Regrets / Something In The Way She Moves / Tin Angel
Other Shows Played[]
- 07 January 1968: No Regrets (7") Elektra EKSN 45025
- 14 January 1968: No Regrets (7") Elektra EKSN 45025
- 05 May 1968: Something In The Way She Moves (7") Elektra EKSN 45032
- 19 May 1968: Something In The Way She Moves (7") Elektra EKSN 45032
- 22 May 1968: Something In The Way She Moves (7") Elektra EKSN 45032
- 1972
- 08 September 1972: Merrimack County II (LP - Merrimack County) CBS