LP-671

The Ramsey Lewis Trio in Chicago

Released 1960

Recording and Session Information

Ramsey Lewis Trio
Ramsey Lewis, piano; Eldee Young, bass; Redd Holt, drums
Live "The Blue Note Club", Chicago, IL, April 30, 1960

10113 Bags' groove (unissued)
10114 I'll remember April
10115 What's new?
10116 Delilah
10117 Greensleeves (unissued)
10118 Blues
10119 Old devil moon
10120 Put your little feet right out (unissued)
10121 Embraceable you (into) (unissued)
10122 You don't know what love is (unissued)
10123 Scarlet ribbons (unissued)
10124 C. C. Rider [See See Rider]
10125 Sandu (unissued)
10126 Summertime (unissued)
10127 The more I see you (unissued)
10128 Bei mir bist du schon
10129 Carmen
10130 Folk ballad
10131 Where or when (unissued)
10132 Two degrees east, three degrees west (unissued)
10133 My ship (unissued)
10134 Song of India (unissued)
10135 Here 'tis (unissued)

Track Listing

Old Devil Moon	Lane, Harburg	Aptil 30 1960
What's New	Haggart, Burke	Aptil 30 1960
Carmen	Arranged By – Ramsey Lewis	Aptil 30 1960
Bei Mir Bist Du Schon	Cahn, Chaplin, Secunda	Aptil 30 1960
I'll Remember April	Raye, De Paul, Johnson	Aptil 30 1960
Delilah	Nicholls	Aptil 30 1960
Folk Ballad	Arranged By – Young, Lewis, Holt	Aptil 30 1960
But Not For Me	Gershwin & Gershwin	Aptil 30 1960
C. C. Rider	Arranged By – Young, Lewis, Holt	Aptil 30 1960

Liner Notes

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 and hear Basic 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 Basic and those-type housewreckers.

Not much happened the first set. Ramsey and Eldee and Red were conscious 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 diffnculty 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 it.

At the end of the evening. Frank, fresh martini held in steady grip. mentioned 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