Rudolph Toombs

Rudolph Toombs, better known as Rudy Toombs, was an American songwriter, born c. 1914 in Monroe, Louisiana, USA. He was a prolific lyricist and composer of doo-wop songs and rhythm-and-blues standards in the 1950s and 1960s. He did some of his work writing and arranging songs for Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records in New York, NY. Unfortunately, Toombs was murdered by robbers in the hallway of his apartment house in Harlem Nov. 28, 1962.

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.