Ruby, who was born in Ghana, has spent most of her life in Nashville. Her father, a computer scientist, was recruited by a Tennessee-based firm, and he moved his family to Nashville when she was just three. As she recalls, “When I got here, I remember taking walks with my dad, just me and him, and I would be singing little songs about the flowers we’d see or I’d be singing on my parent’s coffee table when their friends would come over. Nashville was a great place to nurture this thing I had in me all along.”
Her parents were devout Christians and sheltered Ruby from secular music: “I was only allowed to listen to Christian and classical music. Even jazz was too progressive for my parents at the time. But, I’ve always been writing, I’ve always had it in me, it was my first love. When I was ten, my best friend gave me Madonna’s Like a Prayer and it really opened up my world. The way Madonna was writing—this was not something I’d ever known. The funny thing was, within myself I knew that was also how I wrote, and this was the first songwriting I’d come into contact with that was similar to what I wanted to do. I thought, this exists!”
It would still be several years before Sam & Ruby officially became a duo. Ruby released a solo album, Smoke and Honey in the UK, which reached Top Forty on the British pop charts with a song called, “Sugah.” Just as Ruby should have been savoring this success, record label snafus left her high and dry in Nashville. That’s about when Sam came back into town. So they combined their complementary talents, and the track The Here And The Now was born, laying the foundation for a deeply creative partnership. “That song became a staple of our individual shows,” adds Sam. “If I had a gig, I would invite Ruby up to sing and if she had a show, she’d invite me. We had that one song and people really started responding. We heard the word magical a lot. We knew it too, writing the song and singing the harmonies, we thought, this is something special.”
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Finding each other by happenstance, Sam & Ruby sound like they were always meant to sing together—and we’re lucky enough to be around to hear. Listen to Sam & Ruby at www.myspace.com/samandruby(Photo Credits: Sam & Ruby Cover Art / Micah Kandros)
2 comments:
Beautiful couple.
Are they a couple?
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