MITCHELL & RUFF: A VIAGEM (1966) [RE-UP]

MITCHELL & RUFF
Quando Mitchell e Ruff baixaram no Rio em 1966, foi como um furacão. Os caras tinham uma energia, uma vontade de aprender e de ensinar raramente encontradas. Eram extremamente simpáticos, poliglotas, afáveis e viraram uma atração. Logo foram cercados por uma turma de músicos de primeira linha: Candinho, Durval Ferreira, Manoel Gusmão, Iko Castro Neves, Vitor Manga, Tenório Jr, (e eu, claro - não ia perder uma dessas.) Na época ainda havia frequentes reuniões para se tocar, em apartamentos e casas de amigos;  Mitchell e Ruff não se faziam de rogados: aceitavam todos os convites e não negavam fogo - iam a todas, numa boa. Foi um privilégio tê-los conhecido e tocado com eles em várias "jam-sessions".
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DWIKE MITCHELL & WILLIE RUFF
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. 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. When the Mitchell-Ruff Duo was formed in 1955 it had the advantage, Ruff recalls, of being the least expensive group in jazz, and it was therefore booked as the second act with the best and most expensive bands of the day - Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie - in Birdland, the Embers, the Village Vanguard, Basin Street East and other leading nightclubs. They were all riding the crest of one of the most popular eras of jazz - an era that would soon end with the advent of rock and the dominance of television. What made it an unusually rich period for Mitchell and Ruff was that the older musicians, after playing their set, would stick around and tell the two younger men what they were doing wrong and what they could do better. "We learned everything from those men, Ruff recalls. "They were our mentors." This experience, coupled with the same kind of generosity that they had found among the older musicians who were stationed at the air force base, nourished a teaching bent in Mitchell and Ruff that shaped their own lives careers.Ruff is a man on the move, constantly generating new projects to supplement an academic and artistic life that is already full. He is a curator, for instance, of the Duke Ellington Fellowships, a program that he created at Yale which brings the giants of black American music to New Haven throughout the year to teach at Yale and in the city's predominantly black public schools: singers like Odetta and Bessie Jones, arrangers like Benny Carter, tap dancers like Honi Coles and instrumentalists like Charlie Mingus and Dizzy Gillespie. Mitchell, meanwhile, stays in his New York apartment, occasionally teaching but mostly practicing the piano from morning to night, gladly leaving the details to a partner who obviously thrives on them, waiting for Ruff to call and let him know where they are going to play next. As he has learned, it could be Seattle or Senegal. "If it sounds all right to me," he says, "I just tell him, 'O.K., Ruff, let's go'."
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MY OPINION 
This album has been recorded by Mitchell & Ruff in Rio de Janeiro, 1966. They are surrounded by some great Brazilian musicians such as the late Durval Ferreira. The repertoire comprise some very rare to find bossa-nova tunes, although penned by some of the most representative Brazilian composers. Nice stuff.
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MINHA OPINIÃO
O "american-bossa-nova-groove" deste álbum é sensacional. Tanto Chico Batera quanto Durval, Sergio e Candinho se adaptaram á batida do piano de Mitchell e à marcação do baixo de Ruff, que resultou numa mistura muito interessante, que passou a ser tocada por muitos grupos durante algum tempo, como uma alternativa à batida clássica. Os grandes momentos do álbum, na minha opinião são: "Nós" - uma "valsa-jazz" belíssima, de autoria de Candinho. "E nada mais" de Durval Ferreira e "Deixa pra lá", de Sérgio Augusto, ficaram excelentes, com a tal "batida-diferente". É um album delicioso e que, surpreendentemente, tocou muito no rádio, mais precisamente na Rádio Jornal do Brasil dos bons tempos. BELEZA PURA!
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MITCHELL & RUFF: A VIAGEM (1966)
Label: Forma

PERSONNEL:
Dwike Mitchell - (piano)
Willie Ruff - (bass and trompa)
Candinho, Durval Ferreira and Sergio Augusto - (guitar)
Chico Batera - (drums)

TRACKS/FAIXAS
01 - Tanto Canto (Candinho / Sergio Augusto / Luis Fernando Freire)
02 - A Chuva (Durval Ferreira / Pedro Camargo)
03 - Nós (Candinho / Luis Fernando Freire)
04 - Sonhando (Candinho / Luis Fernando Freire)
05 - E Nada Mais (Durval Ferreira / Luis Fernando Freire)
06 - Ah Você (Durval Ferreira / Luis Fernando Freire)
07 - Deixa Pra Lá (Sergio Augusto / Luis Fernando Freire)
08 - Não Deixa (Candinho / Luis Fernando Freire)
09 - Companheira (Candinho / Luis Fernando Freire)
10 - Mais Uma Vez (Sergio Augusto / Luis Fernando Freire)
11 - Sem Mais Chorar (Candinho / Luis Fernando Freire)