The Ramsey Lewis Trio In Chicago

 

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The Ramsey Lewis Trio In Chicago

Supervision: Jack Tracy

Engineer: Ron Malo

Cover Phot: Bill Claxton

Recorded April 30, 1960, during performance at the Blue Note, Chicago

Argo LP 671

Ramsey Lews - Piano

Eldee Young - Bass

Red Holt - Drums

From the back cover: MENTION the Blue Note to any jazz fan, especially one who lives around Chicago, and you're likely to be answered by, "Wasn't that a shame!"

Because just a few weeks after this album was recorded there, the club that for more than a decade had hosted every top name in jazz had to shut down. The entertainment center of Chicago moved from The Loop across the river to the Near North side, and the Blue Note was left isolated, head still high but without a nickel in its jeans.

A lot of us who had been regulars at Frank Holzfeind's establishment ever since he first opened remembered the big years and were unhappy. Years when it was just about the only game in town, and you could walk in an hear Basie or Kenton or Woody or Brown or James or even Elliot Lawrence Or Charlie Parker with strings or Lester Young carefully picking his way through the audience after a set to head back to the dressing room where the gin was poured in larger than one-ounce quantities.

Or the one bill some years ago that featured Maxine Sullivan, Doc Evans' band, Slim Gaillard's trio, and a young, good-looking pop singer named Harry Belafonte. Or Charlie Ventura in the halcyon days with Jackie and Roy singing those wild lines and drawing crowds of the size that Miles and Jamal do now. Or Lee Wiley and Bobby Hackett, or Red Norvo, or Lennie Tristano, or Duke Ellington playing the annual Christmas parties at which kids who could barely walk heard their first big band and were big-eyed. Or Sarah Vaughan coming in time after time, year after year.

It was one helluva club, believe me, and if you never made it there you missed something..

Ramsey Lewis got there just under the wire and it was almost like old times the Saturday night we recorded him. Al greeted you at the door and Frank was already in his office (first table to the right as you walked in), martini at hand.

The audience was of healthy size, and it included a couple of disc jockeys who dropped in to see what was happening and a night life columnist who used to fall by almost every night for a quick blast before being subjected to such. indignities as having to review Liberace.

The trio was comfortably set up on the big bandstand that was really designed for Kenton and Basie and those-type housewreckers.

Not much happened the first set. Ramsey and Eldee and Red were con- scious of the recording mikes and were playing safe. They skated easily through Bags Groove and Greensleeves and two or three more, sounded good, got a nice hand, and that was about it.

The next two sets were something else. The trio forgot about the mikes and began playing to the audience. They had no difficulty establishing the warm rapport they almost always get with people, and thus nourished by sincere applause and attention, they opened up.

This 38 minutes of music is the cream of those two sets. By the fourth set the crowd had thinned considerably, the piano was drifting noticeably out of tune (Ramsey and Oscar Peterson not only play pianos, they almost destroy them at a single sitting), and the party was just about over.

You judge for yourself how good the music is. I am of the opinion it's the best the group has ever sounded on records. Happy, dynamic, swinging, colorful, it is the sort of trio you are not likely to forget once you hear it.

At the end of the evening, Frank, fresh martini held in steady grip, men- tioned idly, "You know, in all the years we've been going, no one has ever cut an album at the Blue Note before. Ramsey's will be the first.".

It will also be the last. But it's a good one, and that's the way it should be. – Jack Tracy

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