A Tribute to Jazz Legend Ramsey Lewis, 1935 - 2022
The jazz world said goodbye to one of its great innovators earlier this month when Chicago native Ramsey Lewis passed away at age 87. While his name may not carry the same gravitas as jazz heavyweights Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, or John Coltrane, his contributions to the artform were just as impactful.
Chances are if you've never heard of Ramsey Lewis, you've definitely heard him and just didn't realize he was playing the music. In a career that spanned 66 years he recorded more than 80 albums, all of them featuring his distinctive style on piano. A style that was improvisational and deeply rooted in the blues like most great jazz artists, but had an everyman appeal that could please ears unaccustomed to the jazz genre. Most of those ears were introduced to Lewis' music via 1965's "The 'In' Crowd", the highest charting tune of his career. It's easy to see why:
Clocking in at just under six minutes, Lewis' signature song serves as a microcosm for everything that made his music legendary. So let's dig deep into his life's work by examining its apex.
Calm, Cool, Infectious
"The 'In' Crowd" was released on the album of the same name, which was actually a live recording of a show in Washington, DC. The music itself has a fast groove to it, and the piano leads the way almost effortlessly. Overall, it feels much more like a fun jam session that the group would use to warm up than a hit single that would make Lewis mildly famous. But that was where Lewis shined. Calmly riffing on the fly while captivating the crowd from start to finish.
It's that effect on the crowd that really puts the song into a different stratosphere. From the outset they're all clapping along with the rhythm section and by the one-minute mark there are some audible cheers, as if to thank Lewis for the ride he's taking them on. Over the next few minutes he inspires more sporadic hoots and hollers before completing his trance on the audience just after the five-minute mark. Using nothing but his piano, Lewis silences the crowd that was in a frenzy just seconds before, then finishes with a crescendo that turns the silence to laughter. In that moment, the audience was feeling very much like the "in" crowd, but Lewis was by far the coolest one in the room.
In case it's not apparent from the audience reaction, "The 'In' Crowd" feels as alive as any piece of music you'll hear. This is a remarkable feat given that it was nothing more than a piano, a drum kit, and a stand-up bass making the music. Yet this wasn't just a lightning-in-a-bottle moment for Lewis. His music always felt more alive than what you usually hear on the radio. For example, take this tune from a Christmas album he recorded in 1961:
When most people think of "Here Comes Santa Claus" they likely conjure up the Gene Autry version, which is essentially an audio version of a saltine. When you hear the Ramsey Lewis Trio version, you don't wonder how Santa is able to do it all in one night anymore.
Even better than the real thing
Much like the Christmas music Lewis recorded, "The 'In' Crowd" was actually a cover of a previously recorded song. Singer Dobie Gray first released it in 1964 with a fair amount of success. Less than a year later, Lewis released his version. If like me you heard the Ramsey version first, prepare to be disappointed. No offense to Dobie Gray, but he was singing checkers while Ramsey Lewis was playing chess on the piano with the song.
There were literally hundreds of songs in Lewis' catalogue that were covers, but to call them covers wouldn't be entirely accurate. Jimi Hendrix technically covered Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower". Yet what Hendrix did was turn the song into something completely different. He applied his signature style to it, making it entirely his own, while still maintaining respect for the source material. That was the Ramsey Lewis blueprint when covering a song. He made liberal use of his artistic license to take songs to new heights. And he was an equal opportunist when selecting a song to mold in his image.
In his early years, Lewis took on blues standards ("Why Don't You Do Right"), R&B/pop ("Hang on Sloopy"), and even rock and roll ("A Hard Day's Night"). After the success of "The 'In' Crowd", he expanded further into soul standards ("Respect"), more R&B ("Dancing in the Street"), and even a spiritual that would become his biggest hit outside of "The 'In' Crowd":
It didn't matter how well known a song was. If Ramsey Lewis got his hands on it, he would make it instantly recognizable as his within a few bars, and you knew you were in for a treat.
An ear for talent
From the tracks shared up to this point, you've likely noticed that the band supporting Lewis was pretty damn good. Over the first half of his career, there were two distinct versions of the Ramsey Lewis Trio, each one consisting of a drummer and a bass player. The first iteration featured Redd Holt on drums and Eldee Young on bass. For nearly a decade they developed a seamless chemistry with Lewis that culminated with the high-charting success of "The 'In' Crowd".
By 1966, Young and Holt wanted to form a group on their own and that group eventually became known as Young-Holt Unlimited. In 1968 that group spawned a massive hit of their own with "Soulful Strut", which hit number three on the U.S. Billboard charts. If features Ken Chaney on the piano, and while he wasn't the virtuoso that Lewis was, the Ramsey influence is quite apparent:
This would be the climax of the post-Ramsey Lewis careers for both Young and Holt, but Young remained an active musician until his death in 2007 and Holt is still going strong at 90 years old.
Lewis quickly found a new pair to complete his trio when the original one disbanded with Cleveland Eaton on bass and Maurice White on drums. As evidenced by "Wade in the Water" - one of the first songs recorded by the new trio - the quality of the music didn't suffer at all. With Eaton and White on board, Lewis continued to churn out albums at a rapid pace through the balance of the 1960's. At the close of the decade, White left to start a project of his own - which we'll get to in a bit - while Eaton followed suit a few years later.
Eaton enjoyed some mild success after forming his own band in 1973, but by 1979 he was invited to join the legendary Count Basie Orchestra. What was supposed to be a two-week job became a 17-year run with the group. The Count himself referred to Eaton as his favorite bassist to play with. But that was nothing compared to White's career move.
In 1969 Maurice White ditched the drum sticks to become the creative head of his own band where he would feature on vocals. By 1971 that band recorded their first album as Earth, Wind and Fire. It was the first of more than 20 studio albums the band would release as they peppered the pop and R&B charts with their distinctive brand of soul and funk for the next two decades. If you've ever been to a wedding, there's a good chance Earth, Wind and Fire provided at least a portion of the soundtrack and even got grandma and grandpa on the dance floor for a song or two.
When Lewis moved away from trios and began using larger groups for his arrangements, the personnel became more of a revolving door. Even with less familiar faces backing him up, they never disappointed, and neither did Ramsey.
A protean pianist
As Lewis' career progressed through the 1970's, the music world was changing quite a bit. During this time he made two key decisions that helped keep him relevant and accessible. Coincidentally, they were decisions that another legendary jazz pianist - Herbie Hancock - made around this time too. First, he embraced the ever-growing funk elements that were spreading out to many different genres, especially jazz. By recognizing that funk and jazz were not-so-distant cousins and could work quite well together, he kept his sound fresh.
Second, Lewis didn't shy away from the electric revolution in music. By the mid-1970's he was using electric pianos with regularity, including ARP and Moog synthesizers. He was willing to adapt as trends in music changed without sacrificing his style. The result was simply more great music from Lewis that remains timeless. Maybe the best example of this was 1974's Sun Goddess off of the album of the same name. It was an original tune that he worked on in collaboration with an old friend - Maurice White - who even brought in members of his band to contribute to the recording. The album would be the only one of Lewis' that hit number one on the U.S. Jazz charts, which Billboard created in 1966.
Another prime example of Ramsey's adaptability is the straight-forward funk groove dripping with his signature sound titled "What It Is!":
As much as he was willing to change with the times, Lewis never did forget his roots and wasn't afraid to flex those muscles when the mood struck him. For instance, during this show from either the late 1970's or early 1980's he decides to stop playing "The 'In' Crowd" after about a minute in favor of a blues chord progression...with his left hand. At the same time he improvises some jazz riffs with his right hand, bringing pure bliss to the audience for about four minutes. Also, stick around for a great rendition of "Sun Goddess":
Lewis' desire to stay fresh and relevant without losing his touch means that you can pick any one of his 80-plus albums at random and listen to it all the way through without fear of finding a dud. I haven't gotten through all of them yet, but can say with some confidence that he never had an off-year.
It's personal, not business
Despite the success he enjoyed at various points in his career, Lewis was never a household name or even a star in the music scene. His music was designed to move the listener rather than sell records. That was certainly the case with the audience present for the recording of "The 'In' Crowd", and it's been the case with me as well.
During my formative years my dad had already amassed a collection of over 500 vinyl records. Most of them were jazz or some variant of it. Records were spinning in my house more often than not, so I was exposed to a lot of the great jazz artists from the 60's and 70's like Freddie Hubbard, Ron Carter, The Crusaders, Roy Ayers, Grover Washington, Jr., and especially Ramsey Lewis. There was something about that piano player that was just fundamentally different from anyone else playing it.
As I got older and branched out to find my own music to listen to, I found some of the "new" sounds to be incredibly familiar. The beats to hip-hop songs in the 90's were crawling with riffs from all of the artists mentioned above. Some rappers even brought in those guys to create original music for their songs. Even my dad could grudgingly admit that it was cool to hear his old tunes in new music. And it gave us something besides baseball to talk about with each other.
At the same time my older brother was discovering The Beatles, and he realized something odd. It may have been John, Paul and the gang singing and playing guitar, but the heart and soul of the music was something we had heard before. Many jazz artists covered The Beatles when my dad was collecting all those records, so even though he was no fan of rock, he had actually unintentionally introduced us to the most well known rock band in the world. It was mindbogglingly wonderful.
Ramsey Lewis sat front and center when it came to what we now understood as Beatles jazz. This was thanks mainly to an album that Lewis released in 1968 called Mother Nature's Son. The producer he was working with at the time - Charles Stepney - urged him think about covering The Beatles' recently released White Album. Admittingly not "getting" The Beatles, Lewis was reluctant and only agreed to it after Stepney came up with some arrangements and brought in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to support his band. With that, they selected 10 of the 30 songs on the White Album to cover.
By now, you know that "cover" isn't the right word for what they did. They gave Lennon and McCartney's eclectic rock/folk mix the full Ramsey Lewis treatment. Less than a month after The Beatles released their monumental album, Lewis had turned it into something completely different - an odyssey of jazz, funk, soul and R&B that made it accessible to an ever wider audience.
Years after we made the Beatles-jazz connection and continued the ongoing discussion about how our favorite music overlapped more than we could have imagined, my dad died after a long bout with lung cancer. My brother and I quickly got to work on making a tribute to him the best way we knew how. We compiled an album full of jazz tracks to play at his funeral. For me, one of those tracks stands out from all the rest, and it was taken from Ramsey Lewis' Mother Nature's Son:
To this day, the experience of listening to Ramsey's five-minute masterpiece is the closest I feel to my dad since his death. Whenever I'm missing him I just need to listen to "Dear Prudence" and I'm instantly a kid again, being mesmerized by the strange and wonderful sounds that his dad is playing on vinyl in the living room. And that's why I'll always be grateful that Ramsey Lewis shared his immense talent with the world.
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