!' 6, 1992 The Message -- for Catholics of Southwestern Indiana
Wdllie. Ruff
Jazz musician to perform March 17 at St. Maw Church, Evansville
Y MARY ANN HUGHES
essage staff writer
was 14 years old. He faked
le
Ruff can hear the
el a contralto voice
plays his French
the closest sound I
found outside the
musician has been
lag to duplicate that
Sound since he was a
growing up in
Alabama.
he book, Willie and
by William Zissner,
of listening to "the
of a great contralto in
tptist church named
Appleton. She had
rn-like quality in
people used to ask
decided to play the
I said that it was
I could get to Miss
Or to Mr. Buddy Jenk-
sang bass in the
They both sang
ff solos, and people ill
were just over-
by the extraordi-
of those two
Wasn't only the beauty
voice; it was the poetic
s. It was what
bring to a melody.
ever remember a fu-
Sheffield when peo-
have it in their will
Y wanted Miss Celia
Uddy to sing. That's a
never forget."
is a jazz musician and
Ssor at Yale Univer-
chool of Music. His
)no] ties to music go
War II. He was
Evansville with his
a cousin encour-
to join the army. He
hearsing "Ballet Egyptn,nne.
hisageand his father'ssigna- Ruff and Lewis had been
lure on the parent consent
form anti soon found himself
in the army training to be-
come a truckdriver.
His career in music was
born one afternoon when he
was sitting at a piano playing
"Pine Tops Boogie." A
sergeant told him, "You
ought to be in the band --
we've got enough truck-
drivers."
He found the camp's band
director and told him, "If you
let me learn the French horn I
promise you I'll work hard
and I'll be as good as those
guys you've got very soon."
He was sent to the supply
room and given a French
horn and an instruction book.
"It was the most fascinating
book I'd ever seen. I had only
gone through the ninth grade
and I used to read with my
lips moving, but that book
made playing the French
horn sound like the most glo-
rious priviledge anybody
could have."
Because the instruction
book didn't explain how to
do the fingering, Ruff asked
for help from members of the
army band. "I asked a couple
of them -- knowing that older
folks will always help you if
you ask them -- if they'd
show me where to put my
fingers."
He found a friend and a
teacher in Pete Lewis, a bari-
tone horn player with the
band. Lewis showed him
"how to find the right finger-
ing and I'd mark it in my in-
struction book and practice it
all day down in the boiler
room."
One day, the band was re-
working Oil tim song at night,
particularly a "tricky horn
solo that none of the horn
players could get right." At
the rehearsals, the horn sec-
tion kept having problems
with the song. Finally, the
band leader asked Ruff, "You
want to try it, Junior?"
He remembers going to get
his horn and playing the solo
"pretending I was reading it.
Of course I had it memorized
by then." The band leader
was impressed. He promoted
Ruff to first horn player. "He
put me in that chair and de-
rooted all those other guys."
Ruff said Lewis' advice was
"always tell the story. You
can tell the story with one
note."
Ruff was discharged from
the army when he was six-
teen. He went to New Haven,
Connecticut to live with his
sister, who was employed as
a maid at Yale University. He
got a job cleaning the cages of
the animals that were being
used for research at Yale's
School of Medicine.
He began taking French
horn lessons from Abe Kniaz,
the first horn player of the
Columbus Symphony Orches-
tra. Kniaz became Ruff's men-
tor, teaching him "everything
he thought I'd need to know.
For well over a year he sched-
uled me as his last student on
Saturday morning and I'd
stay through dinner with him
and his wife. He taught me
how to speak and pronounce
English properly.
"He taught me German. He
told me what to read. He
knew I was deficient in my
education and he said, 'While
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you're working at the craft of
playing the horn you've also
got to get yore'self ready to at-
tend some institution of
higher education.'"
Kniaz encouraged Ruff to
study music at Yale. "It was
Abe Kniaz more than anyone
else who prepared me for my
career," Ruff said in Willie
and Dwight.
He won a scholarship to
Yale and received both a
bachelor's degree and a mas-
ter's degree. There were eight
black undergraduates at Yale
during his years there and he
recalls being the "fly in the
buttermilk," a reference to the WILLIE RUFF
"entry of Black people into
otherwise white pursuits."
When his studies ended, he
joined the Lionel Hampton
Band. He soon was perform-
ing jazz with Dwike Mitchell.
The Mitchell-Ruff Duo was
first booked as the second act
with the bands of Louis Arm-
strong, Duke Ellington, Dizzy
Gillespie and Miles Davis.
Since its inception, the duo
has performed throughout the
United States; Mitchell and
Ruff'have also taken their
music to Russia and China.
In 1983, Ruff decided to
travel to Venice specifi-
cally to "play Gregorian
chants on my French horn in
St. Mark's cathedral at night
when nobody else was there."
He chose Venice because it
was the "center of the musi-
cal world in the 1500s and
1600s . . . mainly because of
the remarkable acoustics in
St. Mark's."
St. Mark's was built with
rounded surfaces. Ruff ex-
plains that "music hates op-
posite walls and 90-degree
angles. There is a certain
harshness in the accoustics of
opposite walls. Music is en-
hanced by softened shapes."
He received permission to
play his French horn in the
balconies and in the nave at
St. Mark's. InWillie and
Dwight, Zissner remembers
that night. "He picked up his
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French horn and blew one
note, a concert C, not particu-
larly loud. The note filled the
entire church. It was a note of
amazing volume and purity,
one that seemed to seek out
every inch of the basilica and
leave no crevice unoccupied.
If Ruff had played only that
one note his trip would have
made his point; the accous-
tics were indeed perfetto."
Ruff played Gregorian
chants, and American spiritu-
als, "Where You There When
They Crucified My Lord?"
and "Go Down Moses."
"Wherever he went,"
Zinsser writes, "the music
filled the church; distance
didn't attenuate the sound."
Today, Ruff continues to
perform with Mitchell. The
duo make up the longest sur-
viving jazz duo in America.
He has also been a member of
the faculty at Yale since 1971.
Willie Ruff will play his
French horn, and discuss his
trip to St. Mark's Church in
Venice, at 7 p.m. Tuesday,
March 17 at St. Mary's
Church at 609 Cherry Street
in Evansville. The
lecture/performance is open
to the public.
He will be playing selec-
tions from the Gregorian
Chant, as well as spirituals
and blues.
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