For seven decades starting in 1956, when he formed his first piano trio with drummer Isaac “Red” Holt and bassist Eldee Young, until his death last year at the age of 87, Ramsey Lewis, the Chicago-born, Grammy Award–winning pianist, composer, and bandleader, was one of the most popular and inventive artists in jazz. Music writer Aaron Cohen teamed with Lewis to produce the celebrated pianist’s new autobiography, Gentleman of Jazz: A Life in Music by Ramsey Lewis, with Cohen, to be published by Blackstone Publishing in May.
Classically trained from the age of four, Lewis eventually created a swinging jazz piano style baptized in gospel music and draped in popular R&B. That creative combination, coupled with an urbane and elegant stage presence and demeanor, helped make Lewis an international sensation. In 1965, his popularity exploded, driven by the live recording of “The In Crowd” and a string of danceable jazz-interpretations of such 1960s popular tunes as “Hang On Sloopy” and “Wade in the Water,” which each sold more than a million copies.
In 1967, Lewis disbanded his original trio and replaced it with a new one that featured a young Chess Records session drummer named Maurice White, who later founded the supergroup Earth, Wind & Fire. In the 1970s, Lewis, White, and composer and arranger Charles Stepney created several albums for Columbia Records that highlighted Lewis’s new and funky fusion sound and his use of synthesizers, among them his wildly popular 1974 album Sun Goddess. Lewis would go on to record 80 albums as a leader, works that helped define what is now called contemporary or “smooth” jazz. In his later years, Lewis hosted several radio and TV shows, and was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.
Two years ago, Lewis reached out to Chicago-based music writer and editor Cohen, author of the books,Move It On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power (2019) and Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace (2011), to work with him in the writing of his memoir. PW talked with Cohen about Lewis’s musical origins, his musical style and legacy, and the making of this book.
Publishers Weekly: How did the book come together?
Aaron Cohen: Ramsey's agent, Brett Steele, called me and asked if I was interested in working on it with Ramsey. That was in the spring of 2021. So I met with Ramsey at his home—he lived just north of downtown by the John Hancock building in the Streeterville Neighborhood on North Michigan Avenue—and we spent a few hours together and certainly enjoyed each other's company. I had met him before, but I just never got a chance to sit down and speak with him. We got along.
The next time we met, I came up with ideas of how I felt the book should be structured: what I wanted to focus on, as well as listening to more of his ideas. After a couple of weeks, we were working on the sample chapter on “The In Crowd,” because that tune was his big hit. I thought that would be the chapter that would get the publisher’s attention. We just continued doing interviews at his home over Zoom. And when it got time to start writing chapters, he was giving me his comments as he read them, and I would incorporate his comments. And that’s how we were working until shortly before he passed.
What can you tell us about Lewis’s brand of jazz fusion?
One of the interesting things about fusion was that it wasn't just combining jazz and rock and R&B, but also adding elements from other countries, other cultures. And that was certainly true with Ramsey and his groups. The book [highlights] the musicians who worked with Ramsey on albums like Salongo from 1976, [produced by Maurice White and Charles Stepney,] which dealt with Latin American and African rhythms and musical ideas from other continents.
His introduction to playing jazz was playing it for dancers on the West Side of Chicago. He never lost that. One of the other things about his music is the gospel influence coming out of the Black church. He goes into detail about the different Black churches and different approaches to gospel music, and that gospel feel was always there in his music. And that's another thing: people who criticize fusion, who feel that it emphasizes so-called chops or virtuosity over feeling—that was never the case in Ramsey's music. That was also something that separated Ramsey from the other great fusion artists.
Right after “The In Crowd” became a hit, the trio disbanded, and Lewis created another trio that featured Maurice White, whose nurturing experience with Lewis led him to create Earth, Wind, & Fire, and who would later work with Charles Stepney.
Ramsey recognized Maurice White as a great drummer and brought him into history. He encouraged Maurice to come out of his shell as a performer. Ramsey [also] spoke to him about publishing rights, owning one's business, all of the stuff that would make for a lengthy career, especially in music, as far as being an entrepreneur and all that. So, Maurice White learned a lot of that from Ramsey.
Along with White, Lewis collaborated with Stepney, and they recorded several recordings in the 1970s, including Don’t It Feel Good?, Salongo, and Lewis’s Afro-futuristic mega-hit, Sun Goddess.
Charles Stepney was someone who had classical ideas for composing and arranging, as Ramsey did, and they recognized that in each other. One of the other interesting things about their differences is that, while Ramsey Lewis came up learning about Bach and Mozart and Rachmaninoff, Stepney—who knew about those composers as well—was very much into experimental composers, musical theories, electronics, and synthesizers, and he brought all of that to Ramsey’s attention.
Lewis would go on to collaborate with a number of artists, including Stevie Wonder, Nancy Wilson, and pianist/educator Dr. Billy Taylor (1921-2010), who recorded a duo piano album with Lewis entitled We Will Meet Again. Taylor provided him with advice that would help him host radio and TV shows such as BET on Jazz, Legends of Jazz and The Ramsey Lewis Morning Show.
Even after Lewis had been playing for decades, there were still people who he would look up to—people who knew a lot about a lot of things. Dr. Billy Taylor was certainly one of those people, because he had TV and radio experience. [In Taylor] he had someone who he could talk to who had been a pianist, and moved into this new territory had become accomplished at it. He knew the pacing, knew the right way to conduct an interview, knew the right way to address an audience. Billy Taylor had done all that, and was able to help guide Lewis as he went on to become very successful at it himself.
In the book, Lewis writes, “I’m not going to be around forever and ever. I would like something left behind that tells my story: Who I am, where I’ve been, what I think, what I feel. For my kids, grandkids, great grandkids, and others. Thirty years from now they’ll say, ‘Let me check his book out; my mom and dad used to talk about him.’” How does that make you feel, knowing that you helped him achieve his goal?
This is really kind of hard for me to talk about, but that quote was one of the last conversations that Ramsey and I had. We had finished the bulk of the book. Like any book or any article I write, I always do the introduction last. I was getting Ramsey's thoughts, because originally, [he] was going to write the foreword, which, of course, I wound up writing.
