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PRINCESS HOUSE RECORDS is proud to present "The
Princess of the Blues"
Ruby recently
completed a six-month engagement in Pattaya Beach, Thailand. She performed
blues, jazz, and R&B for diverse audiences from all around the world in a
5-Star resort from December 2007 to May 2008.
The United States
Armed Forces Entertainment selected The Ruby Hayes Jazz & Blues Band out of
100's of bands around the country to entertain and uplift the spirits of the
troops along the Caribbean Circuit, Puerto Rico and Honduras, during February
and March 2006.
Ruby sings
Chicago/New Orleans style blues of some of the world's most popular artists
such as B.B. King, KoKo Taylor, Bobby Blue Bland, Linda Hopkins and Ruth Brown.
Many songs are upbeat and danceable mixed with slow blues. She also performs
jazz standards from the 1940's to 1950's by jazz artists such as Duke
Ellington, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong. A few R&B
songs by Gladys Knight, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder can also
be included in the show.
A veteran
performer, Ruby is headlining shows all around the Washington, DC metropolitan
area and the West Coast. She was a Headliner in the San Diego 2004 Adams Avenue
Street Fair Festival, the largest free festival in Southern California. She has
opened shows for international artists such as, James Cotton (former harp
player for Muddy Waters) Vernon Garrett, Ray, Goodman, & Brown, the late
Little Milton, The Four Tops and Cab Calloway III. The Washington Area Music
Association (WAMA) nominated her "Best Blues Vocalist" 2002. WAMA also
nominated her CD, "Ruby's Blues" as "Best Blues Recording 2003." Her CD "Ruby's
Blues" won The Recording Academy's CD Contest. She was a 2002 grant recipient
of the DC Commission of Arts and Humanities and a 2003 grant recipient of Jim
B.E.A.M. Music.
In year 2003,
WETA TV, Channel 26 featured her as a Washington DC-based blues artist in the
advertisements for "The Blues" produced by Martin Scorsese. Other 2003
television appearances include Montgomery Community Television and Prince
Georges Community Television.
In 2005, she
performed in the Washington, DC Blues Festival, "Divas Stir up the Blues" held
at the Carter Baron Amphitheater.
Ruby started
singing at age 14 leading a gospel choir in her hometown of Plumerville,
Arkansas. She toured numerous towns around Arkansas before she moved to
Washington, DC in the early 1970's. In Washington, DC she made her professional
singing debut at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel as part of the Al Martinez jazz
combo.
Later she honed
her skills in a rhythm and blues band called the Exclusives and performed in
military officers clubs and major hotel ballrooms around the Washington, DC
metropolitan area. In 1975 Ruby started her own jazz and blues band and she
performed up and down the East Coast from New York to Florida and made
television appearances on WJLA, Channel 7, and WDCA, Channel 20 in Washington,
DC.
Ruby is known for
her upbeat, interactive performance style which includes occasional
sing-a-longs. When not performing in the top clubs & festivals, she
performs her own original one-woman musical, Ruby Hayes Sings Bessie's Blues in
regional theaters and was attended by Senator Mikulski at the Patterson Theater
in Baltimore, MD. Although, she is seen as cool, calm and reserved, when she
takes the stage, she's hotter than the month of July. |