The motto of the blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 label is "Where Blues Crosses Over". The company's office is located in Lindewerra

Lindewerra

Lindewerra is a Thuringian municipality in the district of Eichsfeld in Germany, in the Verwaltungsgemeinschaft Haustein-Rusteberg. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 Lindewerra was one of the few villages in the German Democratic Republic that could be observed directly from the West...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. As of 2008 Ruf has produced 120 releases, sold over 1 million album

Album

An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...

s, received two Grammy

Grammy Award

A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...

 nominations and ten Blues Music Award nominations.

Past and present artists include Luther Allison

Luther Allison

Luther Allison was an American blues guitarist. He was born in Widener, Arkansas and moved with his family, at age twelve, to Chicago in 1951. He taught himself guitar and began listening to blues extensively. Three years later he began hanging outside blues nightclubs with the hopes of being...

, his son Bernard Allison

Bernard Allison

Bernard Allison is a blues guitarist based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota.His father, Luther Allison was a Chicago blues musician...

, Louisiana Red

Louisiana Red

Louisiana Red is an African American blues guitarist, harmonica player, and singer, who has recorded more than 50 albums...

, Eric Bibb

Eric Bibb

Eric Bibb is an American acoustic blues singer-songwriter. He is based in London and launched his career in Europe. Today he lives in Finland.-Biography:...

, Canned Heat

Canned Heat

Canned Heat is a blues-rock/boogie rock band that formed in Los Angeles, California in 1965. The group has been noted for its own interpretations of blues material as well as for efforts to promote the interest in this type of music and its original artists...

, Kevin Coyne

Kevin Coyne

Kevin Coyne was a musician, singer, composer, film-maker, and a writer of lyrics, stories and poems. The former "anti-star" was born on 27 January 1944 in Derby, UK, and died in his adopted home of Nuremberg, Germany, on 2 December 2004....

, Sue Foley

Sue Foley

Sue Foley is a Canadian blues singer and guitarist.-Career:Foley has been writing and playing professionally since 1984. She has recorded ten albums, for both Antone's Records and Shanachie Records. She has spent over fourteen years on the road as a bandleader, lead vocalist, guitarist and...

, Friend 'n Fellow, Larry Garner

Larry Garner

Larry Garner is an American Louisiana blues musician best known for his 1994 album Too Blues.-Biography:...

, Michael Hill's Blues Mob

Michael Hill's Blues Mob

Michael Hill's Blues Mob is an American blues trio. The members have variously included Michael Hill, his bass guitar playing brother, Kevin, and singing sisters, Wynette and Kathy....

, Candye Kane

Candye Kane

Candye Kane is an American singer, songwriter and performer best known in the blues and jazz genre. She has been included in the Rolling Stone Guide to Jazz and Blues, Elwoods Blues by Dan Aykroyd, The Blueshound Guide to Blues, Allmusic and other blues books and periodicals...

, Imperial Crowns, Omar & The Howlers

Omar & the Howlers

Omar & the Howlers is a Texas based electric blues and blues rock band, formed in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in 1973 by the blues guitarist and singer Omar Kent Dykes. Three years later they moved to Austin, Texas. The band has regularly toured European countries.-Early years:Dykes grew up in McComb,...

, Aynsley Lister

Aynsley Lister

Aynsley Lister is an English blues-rock guitarist/singer and songwriter.-Biography:Lister started playing guitar at 8 and played his first concert at 13. He had learned guitar by playing along to his father’s old 45s of Freddie King, John Mayall and Eric Clapton...

, Ian Parker

Ian Parker (singer-songwriter guitarist)

Ian Parker is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist.Born in Birmingham, he was brought up in near-by Stourbridge. Inspired by The Beatles, he began playing guitar at the age of 8...

, Joanne Shaw Taylor

Joanne Shaw Taylor

Joanne Shaw Taylor is a British blues guitarist and singer, who was discovered by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics at the age of 16...

, Dani Wilde, Oli Brown, Ana Popovic

Ana Popovic

Ana Popović is a Serbian blues guitarist and singer.-Biography:Ana Popović's father first introduced her to the blues, through an extensive record collection and sessions hosted at the family home. Popović founded her first band at age nineteen...

, Spooky Tooth

Spooky Tooth

Spooky Tooth are an English rock band principally active, with intermittent breakups, between 1967 to 1974. In recent years, the band has been reconstituted at various points, and continues to perform occasionally.-Career:...

, Walter Trout

Walter Trout

Walter Trout is an American blues guitarist, singer and songwriter.-Biography:Trout's career began on the Jersey coast scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He then decided to relocate to Los Angeles where he became a sideman for Percy Mayfield and Deacon Jones...

 and Chris Wood

Chris Wood (folk musician)

Chris Wood is an English folk musician and composer who plays fiddle, viola and guitar, and sings. He is an ardent enthusiast for traditional English dance music , including Morris and other rituals and ceremonies, but his repertoire also includes much French folk music and traditional Québécois...

.

In 2007, Ruf Records received the Keeping the Blues Alive Award from the Blues Foundation

Blues Foundation

The Blues Foundation is an American nonprofit corporation, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, that is affiliated with more than 175 Blues organizations from various parts of the world....

 of Memphis, Tennessee.

Since 2005 each year a group of musicians tours in the course of the Blues Caravan project. In 2011 these are Cassie Taylor, Dani Wilde und Samantha Fish as Girls With Guitars, supported by drummer Jamie Little.