Ruby Braff came to jazz in early 1950s Boston, when almost every east coast trumpeter wanted to sound like a modernist bebopper. Not Ruby. He loved the sound of musicians who had made their reputations 20 years before him — men like Louis Armstrong and Bobby Hackett. He once said that what his music represented was simply "adoration of the melody". 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...
Source : https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/feb/12/guardianobituaries.jazz
Ruby Braff
Little Big Horn
(J. 1011)
Tracks
1 Flakey (Braff) 6:11
2 In The Shade of The Old Apple Tree (Arlen, Harburg) 6:18
3 Roundelay (Braff ?) 4:35
4 Deep River (Trad.) 6:28
5 I'll Never Be The Same (Malneck, Signorelli, Newman) 7:22
6 I'm Shooting High (McHugh, Koehler) 4:18
*
Personnel:
Ruby Braff - tp
Sam Margolis - ts
Billy Byers - tb
Marty Napoleon - p
Milt Hinton - b
Jo Jones - dr
Recorded in New York City ; April 25, 1955