"Ruby Red" had been written around 1978 but the band's original recording did not meet their expectations. For inclusion on Till Deaf Do Us Part, Holder and Lea further developed the song and the band then recorded it. Speaking of the song in a 1981 interview, Holder revealed: "Recently, when we were looking through the songs that we'd got for the album, we remembered that we'd never been able to get "Ruby Red" down on tape properly, but that it was a good, strong, commercial sound. So we added some new riffs to it and got it down and it's a good commercial song."
Following their revival after their performance at the 1980 Reading Festival, Slade signed a deal with RCA Records the following year. In November 1981, the band released the album Till Deaf Do Us Part, which included the UK Top 30 hit "Lock Up Your Daughters". In March 1982, "Ruby Red" would be released as the follow-up single, which reached No. 51 in the UK, remaining on the chart for three weeks.
In a review of Till Deaf Do Us Part, Kerrang! said that the song "puts a size nine boot through the door". In a retrospective review, Geoff Ginsberg of AllMusic described the song as "wonderfully Slade-esque" and a "good album track". In an AllMusic review of the 2007 Salvo compilation The Collection 79-87, Dave Thompson said: "Songs like "Ruby Red" may veer a little closer to generic hard rock than Slade really ought to, but that was the sound of the '80s, just as the glam stomp was what powered their years of omnipotence."
