Eight years after Ramsey Lewis gave him his first big break, Maurice White returned the favor to Lewis by lending his talents to an album that put Lewis back in the public spotlight.

The eminent Dr. John plays Ramsey Lewis’ “Jungle Strut,” a deep groove that originally graced Lewis’ classic 1974 funk-jazz album ‘Sun Goddess.’

Ramsey Lewis, it seems, can make anything listenable, even transcendent.

Ramsey Lewis discusses his signature hit “The ‘In’ Crowd,” and a breakthrough collaborative moment with Earth Wind and Fire.

I skipped right to this album’s new edit of “Sun Goddess,” a timelessly accessible 1970s R&B fusion number — already singing the familiar wordless chorus from the original by Ramsey Lewis with Earth Wind and Fire

by S. Victor Aaron Pianist and composer Ryan Cohan follows up his highly acclaimed One Sky (2007) with another slate of mostly originals, Another Look. Though Cohan is an exceptional composer (Ramsey Lewis has recorded many of his tunes), Cohan sought to make his latest record more performance-oriented. He supplements his quartet (Geof Bradfield, woodwinds; Lorin Cohen, bass; Kobie Watkins,Read More

by Pico Chicago’s own Ramsey Lewis is part of a surprisingly sturdy fraternity of major jazz pianists who first started making records more than half a century ago. Like Horace Silver, Cecil Taylor, Hank Jones, Ahmad Jamal and Paul Bley, Lewis’ resilient popularity comes from doing things he’s done for a long, long time. So, OK, maybe Lewis has crossedRead More

Like Ahmad Jamal, Cecil Taylor and Paul Bley, Ramsey Lewis is a jazz pianist who first emerged in the 1950s and is still with us today. Unlike those other cats, though, Lewis was never accused of challenging the existing conventions of jazz. With crossover hits like “The In Crowd” and “Hang On Sloopy,” both from 1965, Ramsey undoubtedly reached aRead More

No serious conversation about old school funk-jazz can leave out this gem. “Always There” is a essentially a two chord vamp, but damn, it’s a two-chord vamp that hits squarely in the center of funk’s sweet spot. The song’s co-creator Ronnie Laws spent the first half the seventies lending his soprano & tenor sax skills to the bands of QuincyRead More