Media: May 2026 • Mark Ruffin’s Jazz Odyssey
Mark Ruffin
Mark Ruffin hosts a daily jazz show from 2-5 pm on SiriusXM Channel 67 and programs the channel as well. Ruffin has a programming philosophy.
“I work by what I call the Duke Ellington School of programming,” he says. “Duke tried to tailor his musicians to whatever song it was. I do the same with our people. That’s how I’ve done it in my 19 years here. Every bit of jazz music you hear, I program.”
The shows may be based in New York, but Ruffin is from Chicago, and those roots run deep, even all these years after moving east.
“It took me a long time to get over homesickness. I went to New York kicking and screaming, but then I got to really understand the lure of the arts for business. You should live in New York for a few years. It teaches you how to hustle.”
Not that hustling has ever been a problem for Mark. Ruffin’s been hustling for decades. In Chicago, he worked at WBEE, WBEZ, and WDCB and is probably best known here for his time producing the Ramsey Lewis show on WNUA (95.5).
“He was kind of my surrogate father,” Ruffin explains. “Actually, I lost my father at 24 and then, like six or seven years later, I started working for him. And how it started, I was Yvonne Daniels, producer, which was something in itself. She wanted to do a jazz show, and she bought in Ramsey, and we had a show called Jazz Ramsey and Yvonne. And it was very cool. It was like a radio nerd’s dream. But when Yvonne passed away, WNUA just turned the show over to Ramsey, and that’s how the Ramsey Lewis radio show started.”
Lewis passed away in 2022, but he made a huge impact on Ruffin’s life.
“Ramsey was very inspiring,” Ruffin says. “He loved hanging out with younger people. Used to do what he called ‘send the elevator down to help people.’ I’ve seen him do that, and he certainly did a lot of that with me. I learned so much from him. And he was so giving to everybody. He already had five sons, but he treated me like one of them.”
Ruffin was back in his hometown recently for International Jazz Day festivities the last week of April. He hosted a town hall at the Chicago Cultural Center with an esteemed panel of guests, including Barry Winograd (WXRT/WDCB) and Burt Burdeen (WDSM), on a subject that Ruffin might know better than just about anyone: the history of jazz radio in Chicago.
“I grew up on Chicago radio. I was a nerd. Talking about the history of Chicago Jazz Radio came to me in Abu Dhabi last year, on International Jazz Day. I’ve been to most International Jazz Days, not all of them, but most of them. In fact, I was the voice of God at the very first one at the United Nations. I’ve been to Russia. Cuba was amazing. Obama at the White House. But I remember seeing Herbie (Hancock) last year, and he said, ‘We’re going home next year.’ And that’s all he could say, we’re going home. This idea hit me that night, man. I know how Jazz Day works. They have their own agenda, but they want the community to do other things, and then they will help promote it. I said, Man, I want people to know about Sid McCoy, Daddy-O Daylie—he’s the guy who discovered Ramsey Lewis and produced his first album, Gentleman of Jazz, and all these others. So that’s when I began putting it together.”
International Jazz Day in Chicago may have come and gone, but Ruffin wanted to name-check a few others that made this last week so special.
“Herbie was obviously the man,” he says, “But it was (Grammy-winning jazz vocalist) Kurt Elling who instigated the whole thing. He’s the one who put the Chicago Jazz Alliance together. He’s the one. So, really, International Jazz Day coming home is a celebration of Herbie Hancock, but it’s Kurt Elling who did the nuts and bolts. So people should know that.”
I mentioned seeing and being impressed by Kurt’s performance on Broadway in Hadestown recently. Ruffin loved it too.
“The first 10 minutes after I saw it, I was like, Kurt, did they write that for you? He was so good. I met Kurt at the New Apartment Lounge in Chicago back in the day at a Von Freeman jam session. He left New York long before I went to New York, and then when I got there, we saw each other in New York for a while, more than we did in Chicago, but then he moved back to Chicago. Man, I was so jealous. He’s going back home.”
Mark calls his relationship with Kurt Elling a full-circle moment. He was experiencing a lot of those when he came back to Chicago. In fact, now that Ruffin is in the Illinois Entertainer, he is experiencing yet another full-circle moment.
“My first paycheck ever as a writer came from the Illinois Entertainer. I wrote a book and even thanked them in my book.”
Mark Ruffin’s book is called Bebop Fairy Tales: An Historical Fiction Trilogy on Jazz, Intolerance, and Baseball. His newsletter on Substack is called “My Jazz Life.” And his radio show is called…
“Aw man, I’m just Mark Ruffin.”
-Rick Kaempfer
Category: Featured
