Rudy Toombs


Rudolph Toombs was an American 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.

History

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 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 in 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.

Songs

Some of Toombs best known songs are listed below.
His songs have been sung by the following artists: