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The ambient nature of the studio, and the liberal echo added to Rush’s vocal and guitar was a
recipe for success, and a single, ‘I Can’t Quit You Baby’, the first release on Cobra, was an instant
local hit.

The song was written by Willie Dixon, but he had his own style of song writing, according to Rush-
“Willie said he had a song for me to sing. Willie would just hum the sound; he never played
anything, you know. He would try to give me some phrases how the song go, and I pretty much
did it on my own”. Guitar duties were shared between Otis and Wayne Bennett, with Walter
Horton on harmonica and Lafayette Leake on piano.

The result was pure Otis Rush, and
the success of the record produced
public expectation of more of the
same. Unfortunately, his mentor, Willie Dixon
Willie Dixon, had him record a third
rate song called ‘Violent Love’,
although the flip, ‘My Love Will
Never Die’ was rather better. “Willie
was like a father to all the musicians
in those days. He was writing for
everybody. We all sort of depended
on him”, he told Guitar Magazine.
However, the relationship was
sometimes uncomfortable,
especially when Dixon had him
record another poor song, in ‘Jump
Sister Bessie’.

The result was that Rush tried his
own hand at songwriting, and in
1957 and 1958 produced three
classics that have since become
blues standards - ‘It Takes Time’,
‘Double Trouble’ and ‘All Your Love’.
In 1958 he employed Willie D.
Warren on electric bass (although
initially just the bottom strings of a
guitar!), which apparently was the
first time electric bass had been
used in a blues band - previously, it
had always been upright bass.

By this time Otis had become one of
the new breed of young bluesman who were changing the face of Chicago blues. Until the mid-50s
most blues performers, including Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, played sitting down, but the
likes of Rush, Buddy Guy, Freddy King and Magic Sam played standing up, and often replaced the
traditional harmonica with a horn section. This was defined as West Side Chicago Blues, but Rush
decried that view - “It doesn’t mean anything to me. We were all just playing music, with the same
musicians, on the West Side, the South Side, and later when I got to play the North Side”.

Surprisingly, in view of their later status among blues lovers, the various follow-ups to ‘I Can’t
Quit You Baby’ never managed to impact in the way that initial release had, and in the end Cobra
Records failed, as a result of the gambling debts of Eli Toscano.