Search - Ramsey Lewis :: 20th Century Masters: Millnnium Collection

This Is All You Really Need

Steve Vrana | Aurora, NE | 02/03/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Ramsey Lewis's career has spanned more than four decades, but the bulk of the tracks collected here are from the mid-Sixties when his pop-jazz piano stylings earned him four Top 40 hits and a Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental, and they're all here: "The 'In' Crowd," "Hang on Sloopy," "A Hard Day's Night" and "Wade in the Water." the other eight instrumentals follow in a similar mode. 1973's Greatest Hits on MCA is a better bargain if you can still find it, but in the meantime this is the one Ramsey Lewis album to own. RECOMMENDED"

Absolutely Nothing Against Ramsey Lewis, But .....

Steve Vrana | 09/22/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I refuse to be a sycophant and award 5 stars based solely on the man's acclaim and musical genius. Especially when he had over 20 R&B/Billboard Pop Hot 100/Adult Contemporary (AC) hits from 1964 to 1987, and they provide only eight of them in a 12-track album titled "The Best Of Ramsey Lewis!"



Two of the 12 here were failed Argo singles from 1963 (Look-A-Here and Blues For The Night Owl), while two were culled from his many LPs (Since I Fell For You from the 1965 LP "The In Crowd" - and Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child from the 1958 Mercury LP "Down To Earth").



This does provide two pages of liner notes by Joseph F.Laredo along with a discography of the contents and a few more nice shots of Ramsey, including one with his original trio, which included bassist Eidee Young and drummer Red Holt. And the sound quality is quite good. But it just doesn't go deep enough into his "best" to warrant more than 3 stars."