“[I]t’s impossible for me to say – as much as I loved him – that in his most productive and influential period Art Tatum was the only guy. How could I leave out Teddy Wilson? How could I leave out Hank Jones? How could I leave out Milt Buckner? How could I leave out a whole bunch of other people who were operating on a different wave length at the time Art Tatum was doing his most creative work in putting together his version of what the jazz vocabulary was about? . . . It’s possible to take one guy and say, he did so much! And there’s all these guys who imitate him. But that leaves out a whole bunch of other guys who were doing things that are ultimately going to be as important to the overall vocabulary as whatever this great giant did” (Billy Taylor in Gene Lees, Meet Me at Jim and Andy’s, OUP, 1988).
“Some of the most brilliant of jazzmen made no records; their names appeared in print only in announcements of some local dance or remote ‘battles of music’ against equally uncelebrated bands. Being devoted to an art which traditionally thrives on improvisation, these unrecorded artists very often have their most original ideas enter the public domain almost as rapidly as they are conceived to be quickly absorbed into the thought and technique of their fellows. Thus the riffs which swung the dancers and the band on some transcendent evening, and which inspired others to competitive flights of invention, become all too swiftly a part of the general style, leaving the originator as anonymous as the creators of the architecture called Gothic. . .” (Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act, Signet, 1966).
Ruby Braff made plenty of records over his nearly fifty year career, and his name appeared frequently in the ephemeral print of jazz newspaper and magazine columns. Over that career, he surely put together a unique version of what the jazz vocabulary was about, his version steeped in the music’s history and yet endlessly refreshed with improvised discoveries. But for the poor souls who get their knowledge of jazz from Ken Burns and other corporate-approved, NPR Cultchu’l Arbiters, or from the (mostly) tin-eared ignoramuses who host “jazz” radio shows, Ruby Braff is probably unknown.
I titled this piece Gemini to reflect the dual soul of Ruby Braff. Like his first inspiration, Louis Armstrong, Braff delighted in building his solos by commenting on his own phrases with mocking or emphatic little echoes, often in the lower register, where he liked to play. (I’ve read that he liked playing down there because he’d originally wanted to play sax, and the cornet’s lower register was closer to sax range, but I don’t know if that’s true.) You can sure hear a lot of Louis in Braff’s playing, and people have written that Bix was his other model, though I don’t hear that – rather, I hear the gentlemanly restraint of Bobby Hackett in some of Ruby’s lines and, often, Rex Stewart’s half-valve lisp in his attack.
And “Gemini” seems to me to accurately reflect what not just Ruby but any improvising musician is doing. You have to be constantly hearing the original melody and chords in your head as you’re playing a new melody, and you have to be listening to that new melody to see where it started and where it wants to go while you’re producing it. And if you’re a jazz musician, you also have to be listening to what the other musicians are playing, and incorporate that into what you’re playing. When I think about all this, it sounds nearly impossible.
Of course, the above applies only to “traditional” jazz players, those who haven’t jettisoned melody, Western harmony, dynamic variation, and any sense of form and swing in a vain search for “freedom.” It’s not difficult at all to trot out your technique, oblivious to any constraints, and babble on to no purpose indefinitely.
By most accounts, Ruby Braff was a Gemini sort in his life as well as in his music. By the evidence of his live recordings and his own statements, he wanted to give his audiences a happy time, and his playing is full of good humor and intense attention to what his band mates were doing. But he did not brook fools gladly. In fact, he didn’t brook anyone gladly, including longtime musical partners like George Barnes and the press, which probably accounts for his not becoming as famous as his talents warranted. I expect the other thing that accounted for his relative obscurity was that he never wanted to get too far from his New England stomping grounds and mainly played the New England circuit (including, sometimes, New York City) for most of his life.
That circuit was hardly an impoverished one. Braff recorded and did many shows over the years with the munificently talented stride pianist Dick Hyman, and with the heir apparent to Lester Young and Flip Phillips, Scott Hamilton. He worked with great guitarists – Barnes, who got his start at the age of 17 recording with Jazz Gillum and Big Bill Broonzy, Howard Alden, Jon Wheatley – and with such fine pianists as Dave McKenna and John Bunch.
As that most partial list of Braff’s musical partners suggests, Ruby didn’t care about stylistic labels – he cared about musicianship and respect. When a British interviewer referred to him as a “traditionalist,” he was prompt to respond, “There you go AGAIN! I don’t go for all that shit! I don’t give a fuck about mainstream, bop or what the fuck have you. These are novelty words to box musicians into categories. Commercial morons invented them! It’s just music, that’s all!”
I can’t imagine a more perfect conclusion to a musician’s career than the concert in Scotland issued under the title Ruby Braff: For the Last Time. You can practically hear the respectful, rapt, delighted attention of the audience, and I think this gave the musicians the opportunity to completely relax and enjoy each others’ company, longtime friends comfortably talking over some of the old standards they’d played together innumerable times. If there’s some kind of conversation more satisfying, damned if I’ve ever come across it. It makes a good place to start listening to a superb, original, always surprising musician.
Selected Discography:
The Ruby Braff/George Barnes Quartet Plays Gershwin Concord Jazz CCD 6005, 1975
Ruby Braff and Scott Hamilton: A First Concord Jazz CCD 4274, 1985
Dick Hyman and Ruby Braff: Manhattan Jazz Concord Jazz 5173306, 1987
Ruby Braff/Dick Hyman: Music from My Fair Lady Concord Jazz CCD 4393, 1989
Ruby Braff/Dick Hyman: Music from South Pacific Concord Jazz CCD 4445, 1991
Ruby Braff and His New England Songhounds, Volume 1, Concord Jazz CCD 4478, 1991
Ruby Braff: For the Last Time, Arbors Records ARCD 19368, 2008
References:
Jim Godbolt interviews Ruby Braff
December 5, 2014 at 8:59 pm: Jim Godbolt interviews Ruby Braff, originally published in ‘Jazz at Ronnie Scott’s’ magazine of November-December 1996
Mr Braff to you…
via Michael Steinman’s wonderful Jazz Lives blog: MICK CARLON RECALLS RUBY BRAFF, BEAUTIFULLY
