An Hour With The Ramsey Lewis Trio

 

An Hour With The Ramsey Lewis Trio

Producer: Dave Usher

Cover Photo: Don Bronstein

Recording Engineer: Malcolm Chisholm

Mastering Engineer: Douglas Brand

Recorded April 22, 1959 at Tex-Mar Studios, Chicago

Argo LP 645

From the back cover: This album was recorded under the most ideal studio conditions imaginable.

The engineer got a good glance on the trio, then just sat back wheel we played. Occasionally he'd leave the control booth and let the tape run.

There was no one else in the studio or the booth. We were free to play as long (and whatever ) we wished.

And so this entire hour of music resulted from one five-hour recording session (ed. Note: It customarily takes nine hours of recording tome to get in the usual half-hour album).

The fact that we knew a one-hour LP was to result from the date gave us a chance to stretch out when we felt like it and freed us from being conscious of any time limits.

It closely approach the atmosphere of a club, except there was no audience present, and no one to shout, "Play Melancholy baby."

And just as you often find yourself going onstage at a club without having planned anything to play but the first tune, so did we do this date. We wanted to record Ruby And The Pearl because we get a lot of request for it, but other than that we thought we'd let the session take shape naturally.

And it did – sometimes so much so that we painted ourselves into musical corner that were hard to get out of.

Take Consider The Source, for example. It is a mixture of an eight-bar blues pattern used for many years in the type of church music I have heard since I was a child. The trouble was, when we started it I didn't tell El Dee Young, the bassist, the chords we'd be playing or anything. As a result, you might notice a few laces where we clash a little, but I'm pleased with the overall feeling we got on it.

C. C. Rider is an old folk blues that we had all heard before, but never played. And because we had never played Walls Of Jericho, It Ain't Necessarily So, and Source before as a gourd, no one had any idea of what was going to happen on the spontaneous cadenzas at the end of those things.

Because the recording studio atmosphere was so informal, we played everything just once, then went on to seething else. A few days later we listened to it all and began selecting the things we were happiest with for this album.

We think it come closer than anything we've yet done to give an idea of how the group sounds in person at the jazz club. – Ramsey Lewis

From Billboard - August 31, 1959: The Ramsey Lewis Trio turns in some listenable jazz on this new set, that should appeal to the group's steadily mounting following. Ramsey Lewis on piano handles most of the solos and tho they are still much in the Garner groove, they make for good listening. El Dee Young is on bass and Red Holt on drums. Tunes include "Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise," "C.C. Rider." "Love For Sale," and "The Way You Look Tonight."

Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise

C.C. Rider

Love For Sale

I Had The Craziest Dream/I Know Why

It Ain't Necessarily So

I Love Paris 

The Way You Look Tonight

Song Of India

Consider The Source

The Ruby And The Pearl

Walls Of Jericho

Angel Eyes