Strayhorn - A Mitchell-Ruff Interpretation
The Mitchell-Ruff Duo was officially formed in 1955 when the pianist Dwike Mitchell and the bassist and French horn player Willie Ruff left Lionel Hampton’s band to strike out on their own. But its real origins go back even earlier - to 1947, when they were servicemen stationed at Lockbourne Air Force Base, near Columbus, Ohio. Mitchell, a 17-year-old pianist with the unit band, needed a bass player for an Air Force radio show, and he saw a likely candidate in the newly arrived Ruff, who at that time only played the French Horn. "He was just a kid, 16 years old," Mitchell recalls, "with a lot of hair, fire-engine red, practically down to his eyebrows. But he had all this energy, and he was eager to learn. So I taught him. Every time he made a mistake I said, ‘You got to stand in the corner,’ and he hated that, and he’d scream and holler - he had the loudest scream you ever heard. But he never made the same mistake again."Ruff has been a fast learner ever since, with no visible loss of energy, and the friendship that was formed in 1947 between two small-town Southern boys - Mitchell is from Florida, Ruff from Alabama - has deepened over the years into the warmest collaboration, one that has taken them to the top of their profession and to many corners of the world. It was the Mitchell Ruff Duo that introduced jazz to the Soviet Union, in 1959, playing and teaching at conservatories in Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev, Yalta, Sochi and Riga; and it was the Mitchell-Ruff Duo that brought jazz to China, in 1981, playing and teaching at conservatories in Shanghai and Peking. Before the first trip Ruff taught himself Russian, his seventh language, and before the second trip he learned Chinese, thereby enabling himself to explain to his listeners, in their own language, the roots and lineage of American jazz, with Mitchell demonstrating on the piano. Teaching and learning have been strong currents in the lives of both men.