Stephanie G. Mathis Willie Ruff died at his Killen, Alabama, home on Sunday. He had a career as a French Horn player in jazz and was a musical missionary with the Mitchell-Ruff Duo. Ruff also maintained a career as a music professor at Yale School of Music. He was 92.
In 1981, their concert in China was considered to be the first jazz performance in China since the Cultural Revolution.
He learned to play his rhythms, both on the piano and drums. He enlisted in the Army at 14, on the advice of a cousin who enlisted when he was 17 years old, with the permission of his parents. Mr. Ruff dismissed his concerns that he might be too young. “Don’t know how to spell your father’s name?”
In order to get a place in an all-Black military group, he hoped that his skills with the sticks would be enough. However, due to a surplus of drummers, the French horn was chosen instead. In that band, he met Mr. Mitchell, who taught him how to play stand-up bass.
Bill of Rights to study with the famed composer a href=” https://www.nytimes.com/1963/12/30/archives/paul-hindemith-composer-dies at 68″ title=”>Paul Hindemith/a>. Bill of Rights allows you to look under the renowned Paul Hindemith. In an interview for the quarterly The Soul of the American Actor, he stated that he brought his French horn to the audition, and they allowed him in. “Uncle Sam paid for my education!”
In 1953, he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He was weighing the opportunity to join the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 1955 when he watched “The Ed Sullivan Show” and saw Mr. Mitchell playing the piano as a Lionel Hampton band member. He called him into the television studio, and Mr. Mitchell recruited Mr. Ruff to join the band soon.
It was unusual for Mr. Ruff to play an instrument that is associated with classical music, but his broad musical training at Yale opened many doors.
In an interview with Yale’s Oral History of American Music, he said, “Lio,nel Hampton’s band was the hardest-working and lowest-paid band in the entire world.” “I would play a saxophone part if the player quit. If a trombone played left, I would play his part. This made me valuable because I could transpose these parts.
It was a wonderful training.” “It was wonderful training.”
Nathaniel, his brother, is the only one of his immediate relatives. Emma, his wife, and Michelle, her daughter, both died before him.
Mr. Ruff recalls that his education was almost predestined. W.C. When Mr. Ruff was in the second grade, W.C. Handy, the musician and composer known as the “father of the blues,” who is from Florence, Ala., was in his class. Ruff, a Yale professor in 2017, said that Handy played the trumpet and spoke to students about “the importance of continuing our education and holding up our heritage and culture.” Mr. Ruff told Yale in 2017 that Handy said music is not always from royalty or even from the highest class. It often comes from those at the bottom of society.
After he finished, Mr. Ruff said, “all of the children who had a musical bent were allowed to shake hands with the man who composed ‘The Saint Louis Blues’.”
He recalled, “I was no longer the same child.” “I had no choice but to become a teacher.”
