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." Big Jeff. 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)
