14 Facts About Willie Ruff

Willie Ruff attended the Yale School of Music as an undergraduate and graduate student.

Willie Ruff played in the Mitchell-Willie Ruff Duo with pianist Dwike Mitchell for over 50 years.

Mitchell and Willie Ruff first met in 1947, when they were teenaged servicemen stationed at the former Lockbourne Air Force Base in Ohio; Mitchell recruited Willie Ruff to play bass with his unit band for an Air Force radio program.

Mitchell and Willie Ruff later played in Lionel Hampton's band but left in 1955 to form their own group.

The Mitchell-Willie Ruff Duo was the first jazz band to play in the Soviet Union and in China.

Willie 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.

Willie Ruff was a faculty member at the Yale School of Music from 1971 until his retirement in 2017, teaching music history, ethnomusicology, and arranging.

Willie 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.

Willie Ruff was a 1994 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.

Willie Ruff was known for uncovering links between traditional black gospel music and unaccompanied psalm singing.

Willie 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.

Willie Ruff's work in this area was a subject of Sterlin Harjo's 2014 documentary film, This May Be the Last Time.

Willie Ruff wrote about classical composer Paul Hindemith, who was one of his teachers at Yale, and about his professional experiences with jazz composers Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.

In 1992, Willie Ruff published his memoir, titled A Call to Assembly: The Autobiography of a Musical Storyteller.