BGO Records www.bgo-records.com [Release date: various]

Many readers’ first experience of Ramsey Lewis would have been the 1965 hit ‘The In Crowd’. This evokes happy times, stretched out with a transistor radio in the summer sunshine tuned in to a pirate station. In some ways the Ramsey Lewis was the perfect antidote to that other highly successful instrumental combo, Booker T & The MGs.

Whereas Booker T was more strictly R&B, Ramsey Lewis came from a jazz background. His earliest albums were for the Chess label offshoot Argo before he had his third crossover “pop” hit. Like Booker T the albums were a mix of originals and covers.

Hang On Ramsey! from 1965 includes his hit cover of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and another Beatles take ‘And I Love Her’ which gets a samba treatment. ‘Hang On Sloopy’ was very much in the mould of ‘The In Crowd’ with the sound of a partying audience adding atmosphere.

With the mix of jazz standards and pop covers, Lewis hadn’t fully made the transition to the world of soul jazz, of which he was a pioneer, but it’s all very easy on the ear. The album was recorded live at the Lighthouse Café in California.

The trio line-up changed on Wade In The Water (1966) with future Earth, Wind & Fire founder Maurice White on drums and Cleveland Eaton II on bass. White would be a constant in Lewis’ journey in the mainstream and returned to produce him in the 1970s. It was Lewis’ most successful album to date making No.2 on the Billboard R&B chart.

The title track was a Top 5 hit in the States and made the lower reaches in the UK. This Ramsey Lewis composition is a classic with the addition of brass to emphasise the wonderfully syncopated whole. It further established Lewis’ credentials outside his homeland.

The album is again filled with covers, a brass section adding weight to songs like ‘Ain’t That Peculiar’, ‘Tobacco Road’ and ‘Money In The Pocket’, written by Joe Zawinul. And there’s another Beatles cover in ‘Day Tripper’. One of the highlights is a cover of the 1965 U.S. hit for Little Anthony And The Imperials ‘Hurt So Bad’. ****

BGO’s great value for money approach is reflected in our next reissue which brings together four albums on two discs, also remastered.

These albums take us into the age of jazz funk, when Ramsey Lewis responded to the popularity of the genre in the 1970s, when it presaged the ascendancy of disco. By 1972 he had quit his label and signed with Columbia. The first fruits of this liaison are reviewed here. It was a cautious start because ‘Funky Serenity’ (1973), the following hits mashup (1973) and ‘Solar Wind’ (1974) were not commercially successful.

It was ‘Sun Goddess’ (1974) that reunited Lewis with his former sideman Maurice White and the title track became a huge R&B hit. It gave Lewis the career boost and crossover credibility he needed. It also tapped in to the popularity of Earth, Wind & Fire (EWF) with several of that band appearing on the track.

Don’t It Feel Good (1975) was co-produced and mostly co-written by Charles Stepney who was working with EWF. There’s a version of EWF’s ‘That’s The Way Of The World’ (another groove in ‘Sun Goddess’ mould) and the whole album is an exercise in polished R&B if in truth lacking the consistency (and sheer brilliance) of ‘Salongo’ and ‘Tequilla Mockingbird’.

1976′s Salongo reintroduced a brass section and the album is more jazzy than its predecessor. This time co-produced by the ‘A’ team of Maurice White and Charles Stepney.

Opener ‘Slick’ is a straight-ahead jazzy groove pumped along by Verdine White’s bass and punctuated by brass while the title track is similarly another great workout highlighted by Lewis’ clean piano figures and a lovely riff-driven breakdown section topped by Byron Gregory’s rocky guitar solo and Derf Reklaw Raheem’s flute.

Liner note writer Charles Waring considers the track ‘Brazilica’ as good as ‘Sun Goddess’. It’s certainly up there and the insistent samba-feel features a wonderful Don Myrick sax solo. It reminds me why I originally had this on vinyl “back in the day”.

The album closes with ‘Seventh Fold’, a dramatic piece based around a compulsive bass line and rhythm. The arrangement – by Stepney – with orchestration owes something to a film score in the ‘Shaft’ tradition.

1977′s Tequilla Mockingbird retained the EWF input, not least in the excellent title track written by the band’s keyboard player Larry Dunn which features Ronnie Laws on sax. Among the other highlights, ‘Skippin” was also produced by Dunn whilst ‘Intimacy’ is one of several tunes produced by respected arranger Bert de Coteaux.

This compilation is rounded out by 1977′s Love Notes which continues the jazz funk vibe of its predecessor but maybe compromised by the more perfunctory R&B of tracks like ‘Shining’ and ‘Stash Dash’.

Co-produced by Lewis with De Coteaux the title track and ‘Spring High’ is written by and features Stevie Wonder, evidently wanting a piece of the Ramsey action.

The piece ‘The Messenger’ follows ‘Seventh Fold’ on ‘Salongo’ in its more progressive jazz fusion leanings. And, yes, there’s rock guitar!

This package is a great way to replace your vinyl. All sounds fresh and as inviting as it did originally. There are no bonus tracks. It also reminds us just what a musical colossus was Ramsey Lewis (he died in September 2022 aged 87), always with a great ear for melody and if not the most prolific in terms of self-composition always interpreting the vibe and, moreover, adding those celestial ivories. ****1/2

Review by David Randall

Album review (Les Fleurs/Fantasy/Keys To The City, 2023)
Album review (Funky Serenity/Newly Recorded…/Solar Wind/Sun Goddess, 2018)
Album review (Legacy, Ramsey, Live At The Savoy, Chance Encounter, 2018)

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections

Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)