Ruby Amanfu

Ruby Amanfu, a singer and songwriter whose trajectory has taken numerous unexpected directions, first arrived from Ghana and grew up in Nashville beginning at age three. Signs of her musical ability surfaced early. While still a junior in high school she had already composed many songs and completed a year of professional singing with the Nashville Symphony Chorus. Local patrons encouraged her to record her debut album, So Now the Whole World Knows, which appeared in 1998 during her final years of secondary education.

Several years afterward, the R&B/pop number “Sugah,” written with Nashville songwriter Tommy Simms, achieved an unforeseen success in the United Kingdom. The track’s popularity prompted Amanfu to sign with Polydor Records and move to London, where her major-label introduction came with the 2003 release Smoke and Honey.

After spending a couple of years overseas, she returned to Nashville and reestablished contact with songwriter Sam Brooker, whom she had originally met at a 1999 songwriter circle. The two began performing together as the duo Sam & Ruby, merging folk, country-pop, and R&B elements. Their independently recorded and released EP contained the song “Heaven’s My Home,” which appeared in the 2008 film The Secret Life of Bees. Following a deal with Rykodisc, they issued the widely praised album The Here and the Now in 2010 and the EP Press On the next year.

In an uncommon move, both Amanfu and Brooker joined the nine-piece a cappella ensemble the Collective for the third season of NBC’s The Sing-Off in 2011. During the same period she maintained an active schedule writing and recording with other artists, placing material with Kelly Clarkson, Justin Guarini, and the Duhks while contributing backing vocals to Wanda Jackson’s Jack White-produced album The Party Ain’t Over.

A year later she issued the solo EP The Simple Sessions and performed on the Jack White single “Love Interruption” from his 2012 album Blunderbuss. In addition to touring as a member of White’s all-female band, she shared a duet with him at the 2013 Grammy Awards, which broadened her audience. Two additional solo singles appeared that year as her sound continued to shift. For her third solo album, Standing Still, released in 2015, Amanfu collaborated with producer Mark Howard and a group of veteran Nashville session and rock musicians on a collection of atmospheric covers drawn from writers as varied as Kanye West, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Richard Hawley.