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 [a253417] at [l98679] in New York, NY. Unfortunately, Toombs was murdered by robbers in the hallway of his apartment house in Harlem Nov. 28, 1962.

[a136013] 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.