David Allan Coe (September 6, 1939 – April 29, 2026), also known by his initials DAC, was an American outlaw country singer and songwriter.
Coe was born in Akron, Ohio. The product of a broken and unhappy home, he had a troubled childhood, and at the age of 9, he was sent to a reform school in Albion, Michigan. Through most of the next 20 years, Coe was in and out of various correctional institutions, having been convicted of crimes ranging from possession of burglary tools to auto theft. While behind bars, Coe took up song writing, claiming he was encouraged by Screamin' Jay Hawkins, supposedly a fellow inmate at the time. In 1967, Coe was out of prison and he was eager to break into music, so he headed to Nashville, living in his car and occasionally camping out in front of Ryman Auditorium (the home of the Grand Ol' Opry) in hopes of getting noticed.
Coe's early music was strongly influenced by blues and R&B (he's often cited Hank Ballard as one of his favorite vocalists), and when he landed his first record deal, with Shelby Singleton's SSS Records, he cut a tough blues-based effort based on his experiences behind bars, 1969's Penitentiary Blues. The album earned enthusiastic reviews despite thin sales, and Coe hit the road in support, headlining clubs and opening dates for rock acts like Grand Funk Railroad. Coe's second album, 1973's Requiem for a Harlequin, was an introspective, poetic effort which attracted little notice. Coe's music began to evolve into a hard, honky tonk country sound, and his single "Keep Those Big Wheels Running" gained some C&W airplay, but he and Singleton soon parted ways.
While Coe's recording career wasn't making much impact, he landed a contract with a Nashville publishing house, and in 1973 Tanya Tucker scored a breakout hit with Coe's song "Would You Lay with Me (In a Field of Stone)." As Coe began making a name for himself as a songwriter, he revamped his on-stage persona, wearing rhinestone-studded suits and a mask, calling himself "the Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy" years before Glen Campbell scored a hit with a similar title. In 1974, Coe signed a deal with Columbia Records, calling his first album The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy. With his second LP for Columbia, 1974's Once Upon a Rhyme, Coe scored a hit single of his own with a cover of John Prine & Steve Goodman's "You Never Even Called Me by My Name." After losing the mask and the suits, Coe's career as a performer took off.
He was soon making regular appearances on the country charts with tunes like "Longhaired Redneck" and "Waylon, Willie, and Me," and in 1977, Johnny Paycheck scored a massive hit with his version of Coe's song "Take This Job and Shove It." Paycheck's recording crossed over to the pop charts and was even adapted into a feature film, featuring Coe in a supporting role. By this time, Coe's outlaw credentials had been solidified by his frequent statements to reporters about his years in the penal system. Coe relocated to Florida, and Caribbean influences began to seep into his music. He was also a devotee of biker culture, and in 1978, he released two controversial albums Nothing Sacred and Underground Album, which threw racial humour in with blue material; Coe rarely performed material from his X-rated albums on-stage and in time stopped performing the songs altogether, but they would create a lingering PR problem for him, leading to frequent charges that he was a racist and misogynist, both of which he's strongly denied.
In the early '80s, Coe's recording career enjoyed a resurgence; in 1983, his song "The Ride" rose to number four on the C&W charts, followed by "Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile," "It's Great to Be Single Again," "She Used to Love Me a Lot," and "Don't Cry, Darlin'." Coe also did more acting, appearing in a pair of made-for-TV movies with Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson, The Last Days of Frank & Jesse James and Stagecoach (both aired in 1986). In addition, Coe had developed an interest in magic and began incorporating illusions into his stage shows. As the '80s wore on, Coe's outlaw image became more pronounced, as he sported larger and more elaborate tattoos, began braiding his beard, and eventually adopted a dreadlock hairstyle. By 1990, Coe's contract with Columbia came to an end, and an unpleasant divorce and troubles with the IRS made a mess of his finances and private life; one of the more colourful tales about Coe alleges that after the IRS repossessed his house, he took to living in a cave for several months, though the veracity of this story is widely questioned.
From the '90s onward, Coe survived as a road warrior; he released albums periodically through several small labels (including his own Coe-Pop), and even charted with his 1997 concert set Live: If That Ain't Country. But after losing his publishing rights in a legal battle with creditors, live work provided his primary source of income, and at various times his band included members o Confederate Railroad, future Allman Bros. and Gov't Mule guitar hero Warren Haynes, and Coe's son Tyler. In 1999, Coe met Dimebag Darrell, guitarist with heavy metal outlaws Pantera, and their fast friendship led to a collaboration. Dimebag, bassist Rex Brown, and drummer Vinnie Paul teamed up with Coe to cut an album, Rebel Meets Rebel; recorded over the space of three years, the record wasn't released until 2006, after Dimebag's death. Coe also won new fans thanks to the endorsement of another fan, Kid Rock, who namechecked him in the song "American Badass," and then invited Coe to open his 2000 concert tour. Coe and Rock began writing songs together, and one of them, "Single Father," appeared on Rock's self-titled 2003 album.
In March 2013, Coe was involved in a serious auto accident when his SUV was struck by a tractor trailer truck; despite suffering broken ribs, head trauma, and bruised kidneys, Coe was back on the road in a matter of months, performing at Willie Nelson's annual Fourth of July picnic. In 2024, he and Hank Williams III collaborated with Hardy on his song "Live Forever".
Suffering from pneumonia he was admitted to a hospital in Daytona Beach, Florida where he passed away on April 29, 2026, at the age of 86.
Zuzu Bollin (September 5, 1923 – October 2, 1990) was an American Texas blues guitarist and singer from Frisco, Texas. Two 78s in the early '50s and a 1989 rediscovery album don't add up to much of a recorded legacy. But Zuzu Bollin's contribution to the Texas blues legacy shouldn't be overlooked, as his T-Bone Walker-influenced sound typified post-war Lone Star blues guitar.
A. D. Bollin was born in Frisco, Texas. His social security records say he was born in 1923, though most music references give his birth year as 1922. As a boy, Bollin was influenced by two uncles, amateur guitarists, who played the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Leroy Carr and other early blues musicians. He moved to Dallas with his mother by the 1930s, served in the navy from 1944 to 1946. He did earn the odd dollar strumming hillbilly songs, of all things, in the officer’s club, but he didn’t take it seriously. He planned on pressing clothes for a living. Later, after his discharge, Bollin discovered that a new blues subgenre called jump was popular. Still with no plans for a musical career, he began listening to T-Bone Walker, Wynonie Harris, and Eddie Vinson.
Then, almost overnight, it happened. Bollin moved to Omaha, where he often visited a joint that featured a comic called Rabbit. On a whim Bollin convinced Rabbit, a fellow Texan, to let a homeboy sing one with the band. Bollin let ’em have it with a natural bluesy baritone so impressive he was hired on the spot as the club’s singer. For two months he performed there, following Rabbit. Bollin forgot all about pressing clothes; he was in showbiz! After the Omaha gig played out, Bollin moved back to Texas, where he played in local bands. It was a giant step up when he joined the mighty Ernie Fields jazz/jump orchestra.
Zuzu sang for four months with Fields, during which time they entertained at prestigious civilian venues as well as Army camps in Washington, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. After Fields told him to “stick with singin’, boy, ’cause you’ll never be no guitar player,” Bollin, irked, got a guitar of his own and set about honing his skills. He got good enough to hire on as a guitarist on a Percy Mayfield show but quit after touring several states because Mayfield wouldn’t let him sing. In 1947 he was living in Denton, where he played in the band of Texan E. X. Brooks. He also performed in bands with such illustrious Texas reedmen as Buster Smith, Booker Ervin and Adolphus Sneed. During this time he took the nickname "Zuzu" from his favourite brand of ginger cookies called Zu Zu ginger snaps.
In 1949 Bollin formed a group with renowned saxists Leroy Cooper and David "Fathead" Newman. Both of these musicians played on his 1951 recording of one of the true classics of Texas blues, "Why Don't You Eat Where You Slept Last Night?" (flip side "Matchbox Blues"), for the short-lived label Torch. Bollin's voice was deep and strong, and his guitar break was in the jazzy T-Bone Walker style. The 1951 piece garnered a bit of regional fame for Bollin, so he figured he was entitled to raise his performance price a bit. Reputedly this irked Dallas nightclub boss Jack Ruby, who used his influence to quash the record. If it happened, the power play doesn’t seem to have done much real damage. A Torch follow-up, "Stavin' Chain"/"Cry, Cry, Cry," found Bollin backed by Jimmy McCracklin's combo. No more recording ensued after that and Zuzu simply started taking more out-of-town dates, touring again with Ernie Fields, this time for three months.
The work and the money were good, but life on the blues circuit could be grim. In late 1957, Zuzu hit the road with the Joe Morris outfit. Morris was a Lionel Hampton alum who knew how to do absolutely nothing but blow trumpet, and that’s precisely what doctors had told him not to do. Joe Morris died on the road, far from his Alabama home. Zuzu led the band for the rest of the tour. When it was over, he sent Morris’s few possessions back to his widow. Zuzu’s next tour was with Jimmy Reed, a raging alcoholic who could still slay audiences despite his legendary boozing. The tour broke up after a bad car accident in New Mexico in which Zuzu almost got killed. Zuzu kept working but in lesser venues, and he wasn’t as eager to go on the road as he once had been. The death blow to his career came when the Black musician’s union, Local 168, merged with all-white Local 147. Still, its deleterious effect was that various Black entertainers of merit could no longer get enough work to stay in the business.Zuzu Bollin was one. He faded from sight, and no one in the world music community heard a word from him for a quarter century.
His obscurity lasted until 1987, when blues enthusiast Chuck Nevitt found him in a poverty-row rooming house near downtown Dallas. He asked the bluesman if he’d like to go to some joints, sit in with the bands. Maybe they could lay the groundwork for a comeback. Hell yes, responded Bollin, who said he was on hard times indeed and if given a chance to sing his way out of them he’d take it, and that was for damn sure. The first place they hit was Fort Worth’s Bluebird, the old-style blues bar with the ambience of a bait store. Zuzu took the stage with the band of U.P. Wilson, a guitarist who counts Zuzu as an influence, and let fly.
Nevitt took Bollin down the comeback trail, acting as his manager and producing the acclaimed LP Zuzu Bollin: Texas Bluesman, sponsored by the Dallas Blues Society and released on the Antone's label in 1989. Bollin was suddenly ubiquitous in Dallas nightspots. The friendly, personable bluesman sometimes performed with the Juke Jumpers, but his most empathic accompanist was Brian "Hash Brown" Calway. In 1989 Bollin played at the Chicago Blues Festival and toured Europe, playing at Holland's prestigious Blues Estafette. During April 1990 he sang and played on four tracks of Hash Browns T Is for Texas album (not released until 1993). His impressive comeback was curtailed by cancer, from which he died on October 19, 1990.
(Edited from Texas State Historical Association, Record Town Texas & AllMusic)
Jerry Ragovoy (September 4, 1930 – July 13, 2011) was an American songwriter and record producer who specialised in creating three-minute songs of intense emotion, enhanced by complex orchestral arrangements and was one of several white American songwriters and producers who, in the 1960s, helped mould the new African-American sound of soul music.
Jordan "Jerry" Ragovoy was born in Philadelphia, the son of a Hungarian-born Jewish optometrist. As a child he learned the piano and absorbed European classical music. He wrote his first song at eight, describing it later as "a direct steal from the Nutcracker Suite". Ragovoy's interest in African-American music was sharpened after leaving high school, when he worked in an electrical appliance store that also sold 78rpm records. He supplemented his income by giving piano lessons.
The Castelles
One day in 1952, a group of black teenagers, who had been singing at high school dances as the Castelles, came in with a demo recording to play to the shop's owner, Herb Slotkin. Impressed, Slotkin and Ragovoy set up Grand Records to release tracks by the group. Success was immediate when My Girl Awaits Me was a national R&B hit, with Ragovoy the pianist and producer. The next record, This Silver Ring, was the first of dozens of Ragovoy songs to be recorded over the next two decades. Grand Records never replicated the success of that first release and soon Ragovoy was working with Philly's premier pop label, Chancellor Records, home to Frankie Avalon and Fabian. There he wrote A Wonderful Dream for the Majors, a top 30 hit in 1962, a novelty number for which Ragovoy persuaded the group's male lead singer to sing falsetto.
Unhappy with the commercialism of Chancellor, Ragovoy moved to New York City. The first person he contacted was the songwriter and producer Bert Berns, whom Ragovoy had met when Berns was a music publisher's rep pitching songs to record companies. Berns needed a song for a new black vocal group, Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters. "He'd been working on this song called Cry Baby for six months," Ragovoy told the journalist Tony Cummings. "He was disgusted: he couldn't complete the song no-how. But one day, over at Berns' house, we got the thing finished." Cry Baby (one of a number of songs for which Ragovoy used the pseudonym Norman Meade) was a million-seller in 1963. Its mixture of pop, gospel, R&B and Ragovoy's lush string-laden orchestration has earned it the reputation of a pioneering soul recording. Among its backing singers was Dionne Warwick. Cry Baby also launched the most successful period of Ragovoy's career.
Jerry with Garnet Mimms & The Enchanters
Working mainly with Berns until the latter's premature death in 1967, he crafted a series of soul records that combined high sales with artistic excellence. Among these were Time Is On My Side by Irma Thomas (1964), Erma Franklin's Piece of My Heart (1967), Howard Tate's Ain't Nobody Home (1966) and Lorraine Ellison's sublime Stay With Me (co-written by George David Weiss), a slice of grand emotion to rival almost any operatic aria (Ragovoy once said of this song "that's my Puccini influence"). Ellison's 1966 performance was recorded with the help of a full orchestra assembled in the studio to accompany Frank Sinatra, after Sinatra had cancelled.
Several of these songs were to become big hits for white artists. Time Is On My Side was a global hit for the Rolling Stones and the Walker Brothers recorded Stay With Me, while Piece of My Heart became the Janis Joplin hit. Joplin also recorded versions of Cry Baby, and another song Ragovoy wrote for Ellison, Try (Just a Little Bit Harder). Their composer was less impressed by some of these efforts, once complaining that "lots of singers, male and female, felt they were obliged to scream until the veins popped out of their necks", than by the royalty cheques they brought him. As late as 1999, it was rumoured that the producers of a proposed film about Joplin had paid more than $1m to use Piece of My Heart.
Outside the soul music genre, Ragovoy worked with such artists as the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the exiled South African singer Miriam Makeba, whose version of a traditional tune Pata Pata was a Top 20 hit in 1967. In the late 1960s, Ragovoy ploughed some of his earnings into a New York recording studio, the Hit Factory, which he was to sell in 1975. Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life was among the albums made there. Ragovoy also owned a shortlived record label, Rags. After 1970, Ragovoy was much less active in the record industry, although he won a Grammy award as producer of the cast album of the Broadway show Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope. In 1974, Ragovoy teamed up with Dionne Warwick to produce her Then Came You album, which peaked at No. 35 in the US Billboard R&B albums chaHe also produced albums by Bonnie Raitt and Milkwood.
He decided to come out of retirement in 2003 for a reunion with Howard Tate, writing the songs for an album by the veteran singer. A comprehensive collection of his best productions, The Jerry Ragovoy Story: Time Is On My Side, was issued on CD by the British company Ace Records in 2008. Prior to Joplin's death, Ragovoy wrote a song especially for her next album, titled "I'm Gonna Rock My Way to Heaven". The song was never recorded or performed until it was included in the theatrical production One Night with Janis Joplin, written and directed by Randy Johnson with arrangements and musical direction by Len Rhodes. Ragovoy was in attendance on opening night when the show premiered at Portland Center Stage on May 27, 2011.
Ragovoy was taken ill shortly after giving an interview for a documentary film about Berns. He died, due to complications from a stroke at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, New York City on July 13, 2011, at the age of 80. In 2025 Ragovoy was posthumously Inducted Into the Songwriters Hall of Fame during an intimate ceremony held in New York City.
(Edited from Dave Laing obit @ The Guardian, Wikipedia & Broadway World)
Ernie Henry (September 3, 1926 – December 29, 1957) was an American jazz alto saxophonist. Not well known, but even in his brief lifetime, he played with Monk, Mingus, and Gillespie – and he was on the verge of bridging the gap from bebop to free jazz. However, his life ended far too soon, but certainly deserves to be remembered.
Ernie Henry with Tadd Dameron
Ernie Albert Henry was born and grew up in Brooklyn and learned piano at 8, violin at 10, and turned to the alto sax while in high school. He began playing in the style of Johnny Hodges, who of course was the alto man at the time. Ernie's first memory of hearing Charlie Parker dates back to 1939, when he happened to catch a radio broadcast of the Jay McShann band from the Savoy Ballroom and, he recalls, was immediately impressed.
His professional career began after his army service, when in 1947 Tadd Dameron began to show an interest in his playing and made him known to musicians who worked in the clubs on 52nd street; as a result he performed with Dameron, Fats Navarro, Charlie Ventura, Max Roach, Georgie Auld and Kenny Dorham. After working with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band (1948-49) he joined Illinois Jacquet (1950).
Here's "Gone With The Wind" from above LP
As an alto saxophonist, Ernie Henry naturally lived in the shadow of the great Charlie Parker at that time. But the youngster had a knack for giving his solos a different twist and avoiding typical Parker phrases as much as possible. In pieces like “The Chase” and “The Squirrel” (both from 1947 with Dameron/Navarro), his playing tended towards a rough cry and adventurous runs through the octaves.
Charlie Parker
In the early 1950s, Ernie Henry disappeared from the scene for an extended period. It was an open secret that he was battling drug addiction. Heroin use was a sad trend among jazz musicians at the time, and many talents died young from overdoses, including Freddie Webster (1947), Sonny Berman (1947), Dick Twardzik (1955), Carl Perkins (1958), Shadow Wilson (1959), and Sonny Clark (1963). Even Charlie Parker, the leading alto saxophonist of bebop, lost his life in 1955 – heroin and alcohol played a significant role in his demise.
When Ernie Henry returned to the scene a year after Parker’s death, his style had visibly matured. He no longer compulsively avoided sounding like his great predecessor but integrated the “Parker tone” into his own phrasing. His sound was aggressive, almost tenor-like. He played virtuoso bop but led his lines across large intervals into remote territories. It’s no wonder that the later avant-gardist Eric Dolphy was a big fan of his. In 1956 he recorded with Matthew Gee and just a few days before his 30th birthday, Ernie Henry made his debut album: “Presenting Ernie Henry” (Riverside, 1956). In September 1957, Henry made more recordings as a bandleader, but they were only released after his death.
His most famous studio sessions took place in October 1956 with Thelonious Monk. The pianist had booked a distinctive frontline of two saxophones for the album “Brilliant Corners” (Riverside, 1956) (the tenor saxophonist was Sonny Rollins), and he had composed three exciting pieces for it. The second studio date (lasting a full four hours) was entirely dedicated to the title track. “Brilliant Corners” is an highly unusual composition. The band made 25 attempts, but in the end, the producer had to piece the piece together from multiple takes. Ernie Henry was on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the studio. Because Monk’s intricate piano accompaniment irritated him, the bandleader even stopped playing during Henry’s solo (Monk often did the same when playing with Miles Davis). In response, Ernie Henry embarked on adventurous harmonic journeys in his solo.
Kenny Dorham, the trumpeter on Henry’s debut album, returned the favour at the end of 1957 by recording the album “2 Horns/2 Rhythm” (Riverside, 1957) together with the saxophonist. Once again, Henry took the opportunity to harmonically loosen his controlled, jagged style. His fantastic playing here points directly toward the freer jazz of the 1960s. These later recordings show that he was beginning to develop a strongly individual style that seemed primed to send him to future stardom. Unfortunately, four weeks after these recordings, on December 29, 1957, Ernie Henry mysteriously died in his sleep at the age of 31. A heroin overdose has been alleged, but he also suffered from very high blood pressure.
(Edited from Fidelity Magazine, New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, and Liner Notes) (NB. There are very few photos of Ernie on the web and many that say that it's him but it isn't, so beware)
Big Jeff Bess (2 September 1920 - August 23, 1998) was an American country singer, radio personality and former co-owner of Tootsie's Orchid Lounge.
Grover Franklin Bess was born near Ashland City in Cheatham County, Tennessee where his parents sharecropped a 60 acre farm. The nickname "Big Jeff" came from pronouncing his initials and his six foot frame. Jeff moved to Nashville about 1940 and by 1942 was appearing on WSIX. He also seems to have worked in tent shows. By late 1945 or early 1946, he was on WLAC with a show of his own. This station had several daytime acts with shows including Mac O'Dell, Ted & Wanda Henderson, Jack & Louise Henderson, and later Mel & Stan. But Big Jeff & His Radio Playboys seemed dominant and most long-lasting. Hattie Louise, by then known as Tootsie, married Jeff and became the Playboys' on-stage comedian and de facto manager. Big Jeff's tenure at the station lasted about sixteen years, eventually as mostly a deejay.
The Radio Playboys were not only a popular band but were something of a proving ground for musicians who became better known later. These included Benny Martin, George McCormick, Grady Martin, Johnny Sibert (steel player for Carl Smith in his prime years), Carl Tipton, and Hillious Buttram. Big Jeff made his mark on Nashvilles club scene. At various times he owned Ship Ahoy, on Franklin Road, Big Jeff's Country Club in Germantown, then the King of Clubs on Clarksville Highway. In one instance he was fined $25 for hitting someone who he was trying to force to leave "Big Jeff's Place" on Clarksville Highway in June of 1957. He thought the person had too much to drink and possibly tried to hit Jeff as Jeff was trying to get him into a car. During the 50's he also owned a catfish diner on the east side of the Cumberland River where many musicians would go via ferry aftertheir weekend Opry performances.
During this time he recorded rather sparingly on small labels. The greater number of Jeff's recordings appeared on Randy Woods' Dot label that was based in Gallatin, Tennessee before it had attained much prestige (that came from Pat Boone's rise to fame). At the time, phonograph platters were not of much consequence to one who was doing well. Big Jeff also appeared in a couple of movies, A Face in the Crowd and Wild River. In the former film, he played a husky sheriff named "Big Jeff Bess," in the latter he sang "In the Pines." In March 1960, Tootsie and Jeff took over the lease of a club, Mom's Place, on Nashville's Lower Broadway. The club name changed to Tootsie's Place, and, finally, to Tootsie's Orchid Lounge after a decorator painted the exterior a vivid purple.
In October 1960, Sheriff Leslie Jett was trying to crack down on minors frequenting drinking establishments. After repeated warnings, he said the next step would be arrests. On a Friday night, Franklin Big Jeff Bess was cited at Tootsie's for allowing minors to loiter where beer is consumed. However, the charge was dismissed in General Sessions Court on Monday, October 24, 1960 after three deputies disagreed in their testimony. Troubles seemed to find him. He was given a $100 fine and a 30-day workhouse term after he pled guilty to charges of illegal possessing whiskey for resale. He was operating of an unnamed Nashville beer tavern at the time.
Another article reported his establishment was raided in November 1962 and he was charged with selling, tippling and storing 46 half-pints of whiskey which was confiscated. However in April, his sentence had been suspended. His attorney had argued that the publicity resulting from his client's trial had provided "sufficient punishment" of Big Jeff in this case. As the 1960's came and went, Big Jeff's fortunes began to decline. Live radio on morning shows were fading away as deejays began to replace most of them (Flatt & Scruggs on WSM being a notable exception). He and his wife, Hattie Louise divorced in 1961; she got Tootsie's Orchid Lounge and he got another club or two that soon folded.
Later Big Jeff worked for a time as a deputy sheriff (reprising his movie role). He made some recordings for Delta in the early seventies. Then in the 1980's, he suffered a stroke. His third wife, Jo Neill, died in 1996 and becoming diabetic he had a leg amputated. He also endured a throat operation that required him to breath and speak through an electronic voice box. Living alone in a mobile home, he declined rapidly but was sometimes cheered by old friends like Benny Martin and Hillous Buttram.
He died at the age 77 in Davidson, Tennessee due to complications from diabetes.
Willie Ruff (September 1, 1931 – December 24, 2023) was an American jazz musician, specializing in the French horn and double bass, and a music scholar and educator, primarily as a Yale professor from 1971 to 2017.
Willie Henry Ruff Jr. was born in Sheffield, Alabama. He was one of eight children, and his father left the family before Willie was a year old. His mother died from tuberculosis when he was 13.Willie then went to live with his father and attend high school in Evansville, Indiana. In 1946, at age 14, he lied about his age, forged his father's signature, and joined the Army on the expectation of developing a career as a drummer. When the band had too many percussionists and the horns were the weakest section, Willie volunteered to learn to play the horn. He learned on his own from an Oscar Franz method book, practicing in the boiler room.
When Willie was 16 years old and playing in the band at segregated Lockbourne Air force Base near Columbus, Ohio, he started taking lessons from Abe Kniaz, first horn in the Columbus Philharmonic Orchestra. He discovered that he had been using incorrect fingerings and soon improved his technique, musical knowledge, and other knowledge under Kniaz's guidance. It was while stationed at Lockbourne that Willie met his future duo partner, Dwike Mitchell, who recruited Ruff to play bass with his unit band for an Air Force radio program. Ruff continued to study orchestral horn, and attended the Yale School of Music as an undergraduate (Bachelor of Music, 1953) and graduate student (Master of Music, 1954). He then joined Lionel Hampton's band, with which Mitchell was already playing, and the two musicians left to form a duo in 1955.
Together as the Mitchell-Ruff Duo, they played as "second act" to artists such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie. From 1955 to 2011, the duo regularly performed and lectured in the United States, Asia, Africa, and Europe. The 1959 Mitchell-Ruff Duo was the first jazz band to play in the Soviet Union. In 1966 they accompanied President Lyndon Johnson to Mexico, and the following year they made a film in Brazil which traced the African roots of Brazilian music. Ruff was chosen by John Hammond to be the bass player for the recording sessions of Songs of Leonard Cohen, an album first released in 1967. During those sessions, he and Cohen laid down the bed tracks for most of the songs on the album.
Ruff was a faculty member at the Yale School of Music from 1971 until his retirement in 2017, teaching music history, ethnomusicology, and arranging. Ruff's classes at Yale, often with partner Dwike Mitchell, were free-flowing jam sessions: roller-coaster rides through the colours of American Improvisational Music. The duo could play in the style of most notable jazz artists and related styles. They had a large repertoire. Ruff was founding Director of the Duke Ellington Fellowship Program at Yale, a community-based organization sponsoring artists mentoring and performing with Yale students and young musicians from the New Haven Public School System. The program was founded in 1972 as a "Conservatory Without Walls" to "'capture the essence and spirit' of the tradition of African-American music". By its 30th anniversary in 2002, the program had reached an estimated 180,000 students in New Haven schools.
The Duo in China
From 1976 to 1977, he held a visiting appointment at Duke University, where he oversaw the jazz program and directed the Duke Jazz Ensemble. In 1979, with the scientist John Rodgers, he recorded a realization of Harmonices mundi. He was also on the faculty at UCLA and Dartmouth. The Mitchell-Ruff trio played in China in 1981. Ruff was one of the founders of the W. C. Handy Music Festival in Florence, Alabama. The first festival was first held in 1982. In 1983 Ruff recorded as an unaccompanied soloist in St. Marks basilica in Venice. He was fluent in eight languages, and his unusual talents as both a performer and a teacher have helprd to make jazz accessible to audiences throughout the world.
Mingus, Ellington & Ruff
In 1992, Ruff published his memoir, titled A Call to Assembly: The Autobiography of a Musical Storyteller. The autobiography was hailed as "an unmitigated delight" and was awarded the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. Ruff was a 1994 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. In 2000, he received the Connecticut Governor's Arts Award for his work with the Duke Ellington Fellowship Program. In May 2013, he was awarded the Sanford Medal. The Sanford Medal is the highest honour from Yale University's School of Music.
Ruff was known for uncovering links between traditional black gospel music and unaccompanied psalm singing. Ruff's theory was that the Scottish Presbyterian practice of lining out, in which a precentor read or chanted a line of the psalm, which was then sung by the congregation, led to the call and response form of black gospel music. Ruff co-created the documentary "A Conjoining of Ancient Song", which focuses on a rapidly vanishing form of congregational singing that is shared by Scottish, African American, and Native American music. It received its world premiere screening at Yale in 2013. Ruff's work in this area was also a subject of Sterlin Harjo's 2014 documentary film, This May Be the Last Time.
Throughout his time with the duo, Dwike Mitchell maintained a residence in New York City and a parallel career teaching piano there. In 2012, after becoming ill, he returned to his native South, spending his last months in Jacksonville, Florida where he died on April 7, 2013, of pancreatic disease. Ruff retired from teaching at Yale in 2017. A year later, the university bestowed on Ruff an honorary doctorate. He died at his home in Killen, Alabama on December 24, 2023, at the age of 92.
(Edited from the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, The Horn Society & Wikipedia)
Caroline Paton (31 August 1932 -18 March 2019) was a singer of traditional and contemporary folk songs with a bright, beautiful voice; an amazing recall of lyrics; and a talent for harmony, also a co-owner of Folk-Legacy Records.
Caroline Ann Swenson was born with a sight-impairment. She grew up in Whiting, Indiana, near Chicago and first became intrigued by folk music at summer camps where she was a counsellor. By the time she started college, her interest in folk music was well-established. Caroline studied for two years at Oberlin College before transferring to the University of Chicago, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology. Wanting to experience the western United States, Caroline took a job at the University of California library in Berkeley, California, at the same time exploring ways to pursue her interests in literature, music and anthropology.
She met her husband Sandy Paton, at a concert in 1957 after she asked him for lyrics to the song he had performed that night. Sandy had already noticed her in the front row as she was harmonizing with his singing. They connected immediately over their love of folk music, and sang that song together for many years. Later, they travelled in England performing in London clubs, studying British folk music, and listening to recordings at Cecil Sharp House. They took a trip to Scotland with their 9-month-old son David to spend time with Jeannie Robertson, a renowned ballad singer from Aberdeen, Scotland, and Hamish Henderson of the School of Scottish Studies.
After returning to the States, they established the label Folk-Legacy in 1961 with a friend Lee B. Haggerty. It was an independent record company which introduced many voices of the East Coast folk revival, such as Gordon Bok or Rosalie Sorrels, as well as artists of the older generation, including the Kentucky singer Sarah Ogan Gunning and the North Carolina banjo player and singer Frank Proffitt.
Over the next 50 years, Caroline and Sandy brought music and joy to thousands through performances, special gatherings, and sales of the traditional and contemporary folk recordings they produced. As performing artists and in keeping with the folk tradition, the Patons encouraged the audience at their own concerts to sing along on choruses and be active participants in the folk music experience. She and her husband sang together for many years before being joined by their musical sons and singing grandchildren. Folk-Legacy’s home-based operation and music was featured in the New York Times in 1981.
Caroline and Sandy’s Folk-Legacy sales booth was a steadfast presence at the Old Songs Folk Festival, the New England Folk Festival, and historically at the Champlain Valley Folk Festival. The Patons were given the honorary designation of Connecticut State Troubadours in 1993. Caroline and Sandy also received awards and accolades from the California Traditional Music Society, the Memphis Dulcimer Festival in Tennessee, the Folk Alliance, and the Eisteddfod Festival of Traditional Arts in Massachusetts.
Sandy Paton who was born in Florida, USA on 22 January 1929, later suffered from emphysema which required that he was constantly connected to oxygen. He died in Sharon, Connecticut USA on 26 July 2009. In November 2018, Caroline sold Folk-Legacy to the Smithsonian Institution. After living in a Connecticut nursing home for a year she died on 18 March 2019 at the age of 86.
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