Ramsey Lewis - Bach To The Blues

Ramsey Lewis Trio - Bach to the Blues - Argo LP 732 - Argo Original Pressing, Grey Label, Mono

Ramsey Lewis - Piano
Eldee Young - Bass & Cello
Red Holt - Drums

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Richard Evans - Bass on A5, B4

Recorded - January 31, 1964 - Ter Mar Recording Studio, Chicago

Supervision - Esmond Edwards
Engineer - Ron Malo
Cover Photo - Don Bronstein

Released - May 16, 1964

This posting marks the beginning of a new ongoing blog project to chronicle the rather underexposed Argo studio recordings of the Ramsey Lewis Trio (minus the Christmas sides) from February 1961 to January 1964. I`ve had a bit of an abortive start by earlier posting `More Music From The Soil`, recorded in February 1961, and `Country Meets The Blues`, cut in August 1962, so covering old ground here. I`ve always been a fan of Ramsey, Eldee and Red, but only recently started to listen very closely to the trio... the years 1961-1964 in my opinion were perhaps the most fertile and interesting period of the trio before its massive, cross over pop commercial success of the Ìn Crowd` in 1965 eventually tore it apart. This is the time however when they were a tight, straight ahead trio with some blues, funky influences while still remaining firmly in the jazz idiom.

`Bach to the Blues`cut at the very tail end of this period in January 1964 catches the trio at the height of their powers. Ostensibly serving as the trio`s takes on familiar classical and blues themes, I like how Ramsey puts it in his liner notes: ``This is not an offering of third stream, main-stream, progressive, commercial, or `funky` jazz...This is the music that Red, Eldee and I love to play and make a living at`` Acceptable fidelity after some restoration off the original mono deep groove vinyl.

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