Reuben "Ruby" Braff (March 16, 1927 – February 9, 2003) was an American jazz trumpeter and cornetist. Jack Teagarden was once asked about him on the Garry Moore television show and described Ruby as "the Ivy League Louis Armstrong".
Braff was born in Boston, and was musically self-taught. He performed for parties and at clubs around the city in the 1940s, joined the bands of clarinetists Edmond Hall and Pee Wee Russell in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and, in 1953, moved to New York, where his inventive fluency brought him work with traditional and modern bands alike. He joined the septet of the warm-toned trombonist Vic Dickenson, as well as groups led by brass players Buck Clayton and Urbie Green, and began to lead bands of his own. Swing musicians, such as Bud Freeman and Benny Goodman, hired him and, in 1956, he appeared in a jazz-themed television play, The Magic Horn.
Though Braff was out of step with jazz fashions in the later 1950s - and periodically out of work as a result - he made a succession of excellent recordings, notably a Billie Holiday tribute, Holiday In Braff, and an exuberant partnership with Roy Eldridge, Easy Now! The term "mainstream jazz" was coined by the critic Stanley Dance in this period, mainly to wrap a name around some widely admired sessions featuring various sub-groups of the Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman bands - and to distinguish a kind of sophisticated swing from bop and traditional jazz.
Braff was now in his element. He began working with pianist George Wein's Newport All Stars, and very fruitfully with pianists Ralph Sutton and Ellis Larkins, and he started to tour more widely, often playing with Scottish trumpeter Alex Welsh's lively ensemble when in Britain.
From 1973, he worked in regular partnership with guitarist George Barnes, rhythm guitarist Wayne Wright and bassist Michael Moore, producing some of the most exquisitely crafted music of the mainstream movement - and some of the most inspired, small-band performances in the history of jazz. They also made superb recordings for Concord, and worked with singer Tony Bennett.
He also performed with pianists Dave McKenna and Dick Hyman, participating in the latter's New York Jazz Repertory Company (notably on a tribute to Louis Armstrong in November 1974), and he was a significant figure in the Concord label's role in consolidating mainstream jazz. In this context, Braff also managed a steady association, from 1982, with the tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton - like him, a player who had elected to inhabit an earlier jazz world.
From the early 1990s, Braff also began working for the Arbors label. In that decade he became more imaginative and inventive than ever - the melody lines of saxophonists seemed to replace those of brass-players as his inspiration - and he made a series of scintillating records with the cream of the mainstream scene. Though serious illnesses seemed likely to end his career, in 1994 he successfully returned to the road.
But success was tempered by his ill-health. Troubled with emphysema, glaucoma and a bad heart, he had difficulties in aircraft and had to be pushed in a wheelchair across air terminals. He could not play where people smoked, and he had to have lighting lowered. Braff's health deteriorated during a British tour in 2002 and the remainder of the dates were cancelled. He made his last public appearance in August of 2002 at the Narin International Jazz Festival in Scotland. After which he returned to his lonely life in Cape Cod where he died at home of complications from emphysema, heart failure, and glaucoma on February 9, 2003, in Chatham, Massachusetts. He had spent a good part of his life living in the Riverdale section of The Bronx, New York City.
Ruby Braff may not have joined the household-name category of Louis Armstrong (his most significant influence), Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, nor did he shift the evolutionary course of the music. But he was one of the finest practitioners of his instrument, gifted with a rare fertility of ideas and an unerring control of their direction and shape. His playing was instantly recognizable within seconds.
(Edited from John Fordham’s obit @ The Guardian, The Independent & Wikipedia)