Down To Earth - Ramsey Lewis

 

Soul Mist

Down To Earth

The Ramsey Lewis Trio

Plays Music From The Soil

The Ramsey Lewis Trio appears by arrangement with Argo Records

Supervision: Jack Tracy

Cover Photography and Design: Leroy Winbush

Recorded at Tel-Mar Recording studios in Chicago, Nov. 6 and Dec. 4, 1958

Mercury SR 80029

1959

Personnel:

Piano: Ramsey Lewis

Bass: El Dee Young

Drums: Red Holt

From the back cover: Most "trios" are really nothing of the sort. They usually consist of a piano soloist who hires a bassist and drummer to keep time for hime and gives each of them one solo to mollify their egos.

The Ramsey Lewis Trio is the genuine article.

It is made up of three men, each of whom has a vital role in contributing to the overall sound and feeling of the group. Should any one of them leave, the organization would take on an entirely different musical appearance and would be virtually unrecognizable save for some obvious surface qualities.

This is the course that Lewis, El Dee Young, and Red Holt have chosen to follow ever since they decided they wanted to play together late in 1956. They worked a series of Chicago night clubs for more than two years, always polishing, honing, and patting the group into the unified entity they sought before going out on the road at the beginning of 1959 for a successful opening in New York at Birdland.

For a time the influence of the Modern Jazz Quartet could strongly be heard in the performances of Ramsey, El Dee and Red. The group in fact subtitled itself "The Gentle Men Of Jazz." Their Music was quiet, under firm control, and swung softly.

But gradually the group began to undergo a change. There was a constriction implied in the "Gentle Men" cognomen that kept them from digging in and snarling should they feel like it.

And so when this album was being plotted, the first point established was that there was to be no holds barred. The trio could play exactly as it wished on the material selected and forget about gentleness.

Dark Eyes

Come Back To Sorrento

Soul Mist

John Henry

Greensleeves

We Blue It

Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child

Suzanne

Billy Boy

Decisions