Jazz Articles about Ramsey Lewis

Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis

by AAJ Staff
May 8, 2005

Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis A PBS television series LRSmedia & WTTW National Productions 2005

Here's cause for great celebration: for the first time in forty years, a American national network will air a weekly program devoted to jazz. Quite naturally, it's going to be on public television; expect an opening one-hour special and thirteen subsequent half-hour episodes, all hosted by Ramsey Lewis and featuring different musical guests in performance and ...

Ramsey Lewis: Love Songs

by Jason Elias
January 29, 2005

Sometimes it's a good idea to do a Love Songs compilation. This is one of those times. Ramsey Lewis was signed to Columbia from 1973 to 1991. Of course, during those times, jazz went through many changes, and Lewis was certainly ready for them all. Easily moving from acoustic to electric piano to whatever synths were in fashion, Lewis never lost his charm or musical identity, although “Spiderman" and “Breaker Beat" certainly cut it close. No worries and ...

The Ramsey Lewis Trio: The Sound Of Christmas

by David Rickert
November 25, 2004

Those who purchase a Christmas album are mainly looking for festive music suitable for decorating the tree or baking cookies and not an introspective, challenging listening experience. Thus an artist who records such a record must take into account what the audience wants to hear and not his own musical aspirations, which may be why Mingus and Miles never recorded one. Ramsey Lewis, however, is the perfect guy for such a task, since he always approached playing jazz from the ...

Ramsey Lewis Trio: Time Flies

by Michael P. Gladstone
September 13, 2004

The latest album from the Ramsey Lewis Trio, Time Flies, revisits several Lewis benchmark recordings in addition to presenting new compositions. While I cannot say that Ramsey Lewis has come full circle since his late-1950s albums, it is indeed a pleasure to hear him in primarily a mainstream jazz setting again.

While much of the population marks “The In Crowd" in 1965 as ground zero for Lewis' popularity, I strongly recommend his recordings during the late '50s and ...

Ramsey Lewis & Nancy Wilson: Meant to Be

by AAJ Staff
January 17, 2003

"Meant to be" indeed! After years of playing and performing together, two of the jazz world’s most underappreciated contemporary legends have once again gotten it together enough to get together on record, and the results are well intended to say the least. The album is a bit misnomered, however, for though both stars get their names above the title, only one appears on every track. In fact, Wilson wraps her worn but wonderfully willing cords around fewer than half of ...

Ramsey Lewis and Nancy Wilson: Meant To Be

by Mathew Bahl
April 12, 2002

The careers of singer Nancy Wilson and pianist Ramsey Lewis have followed parallel lines since the early 1960s. Although both began as jazz artists, they soon found greater fame and fortune in contemporary pop and have rarely looked back since. In 1982, Mr. Lewis and Ms. Wilson teamed up for a vapid, forgettable collection of smooth jazz/contemporary pop called The Two of Us. For jazz fans, the record represented all the wrong turns taken by these two obviously talented musicians. ...

Ramsey Lewis: Dance of the Soul

by Robert Spencer
June 1, 1998

Here's Ramsey Lewis doin' his thing, and even after all these years, nobody does it as ably or as amiably as Ramsey. On this disc there are, among the soloists, a fine trumpeter and an interesting guitarist, but the advance release leaves them anonymous. In any case, kudos to all. “Baile del Alma (Dance of the Soul)" is pleasingly jazzy. It thrusts ahead without any nonsense, but the (again anonymous) drumming is scattershot and inventive, instead of resorting to pallid ...