| Rudy Toombs | |
| Background: | solo_singer |
| Birth Name: | Rudolph Toombs |
| Birth Date: | 1914 |
| Birth Place: | Monroe, Louisiana, United States |
| Death Date: | November 28, |
| Death Place: | New York, United States |
| Genre: | Jump blues, rhythm and blues, blues |
| Occupation: | Songwriter |
| Associated Acts: | The Clovers, Ruth Brown |
Rudolph Toombs (1914 - November 28, 1962)[1] was an American performer and songwriter. He wrote "Teardrops from My Eyes", Ruth Brown's first number one R&B song, and other hit songs for her, including "5-10-15 Hours". He also wrote "One Mint Julep" for The Clovers.[2]
Toombs was born in Monroe, Louisiana. He began as a vaudeville-style song-and-dance man and later became a productive lyricist and composer of doo-wop songs and rhythm and blues standards in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of his work was done at Atlantic Records, writing and arranging songs for Ahmet Ertegun. Toombs was murdered by robbers in the hallway of his apartment house in Harlem, New York, in 1962.[3]
Ruth Brown credited Toombs as a major reason for her success. She describes him as joyful, exuberant man, so full of life that he passed that ebullience on to her. He taught her how to take a moody blues ballad and make it into a bouncy jump blues.[4]
Some of Toombs' best known songs are listed below.[3]
His songs (apart from those recordings listed above) have been sung by the following artists:[1]