Here’s to resurrecting the early Ramsey Lewis Trio! – with Ramsey on piano, bassist Eldee Young, and drummer Redd Holt. They started playing together in 1956, and played great boppin’ jazz. It was only with the albums of 1965, The In Crowd, and Hang On Ramsey, that the trio became popular amongst the general public. But Down to Earth (see below) and The In Crowd are the only LP’s to be revived as cd’s from this early period. The Trio’s popularity was a death knell to jazz fans. I’m pretty sure they didn’t call his work ‘fusion’ (a four-letter word) back then, but they sure do now. Whatever great jazz they performed in the early Trio’s ten years has been dropped. The baby’s been thrown out with the bath water.
After that early trio disbanded in ‘65 Ramsey went on to disco-funk, and then got electric – but he returned to his own roots: jazz piano. Check out this You Tube duet with Billy Taylor. I’m not sure just when this was recorded – but it rocks just the same. And Here’s Ramsey at the 2007 New Orleans Jazz Fest.
My favorite album, perhaps of all time, is 1958’s Down to Earth. This really goes to the roots. It’s soulful and it’s funky. Listen, right here on this blog’s player, to “We Blue It.”
While Dave Brubeck often had a beat-on-the-keyboard with-both-hands-style, and Oscar Peterson played one-note-at-a-time (and lots of them) the beauty of Ramsey Lewis is his understated style. He’s a minimalist – and that’s refreshing, simply refreshing. What’s more, he rocks!
- Pulsifier
