R.I.P.: Ramsey Lewis, Jazz Legend

Ramsey Lewis )May 27, 1935 – September 12, 2022)

Chicago native Ramsey Lewis, a jazz pianist and composer who scored on the pop charts with the 1965 hit “The In Crowd,” died Monday.

He was 87 according to The Chicago Sun-Times.

A statement on his Facebook page listed no cause of death but said Lewis “died peacefully at his home in Chicago” Monday morning.

Lewis was born and raised in Chicago, where his family lived and worked in the shadow of Cabrini-Green. His music studies ran the gamut, from playing the organ on Sundays at his local church to the Chicago Music College Preparatory School. His six-decade music career would take him to the height of the jazz world, across the globe to music festivals, and honors that included three Grammy Awards, a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Award. He recorded 80 albums, five of which attained gold record status.

His first band, the Clefs, evolved from a college group he joined as a freshman at Wells High School. Three of the Clefs — Lewis, bassist Eldee Young, and drummer Redd Holt — later became what would become known as the classic Ramsey Lewis Trio.

Their instrumental cover of “The In Crowd,” written by Dobie Gray, charged in 1965 and was followed by two more hits, “Hang on Sloopy” and “Wade in the Water.”

“Way before we had [gigs at] Orchestra Hall and the Chicago Theatre, there were bars and taverns and lounges on almost every corner and in ever part of the city,” Lewis told the Sun-Times in 2018. “It was great because it gave musicians coming up [in the ranks] the chance to get their act together, get their performance chops. It gave them the chance to try this musical style, that musical style. You were not yet ready for Orchestra Hall, but there’s a bar on the corner that will pay you a couple of bucks, give you some Coca-Cola and you can bring in your group and play what you want to.

Lewis was familiar to jazz aficionados across the Chicago area, performing at the Chicago Jazz Festival, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera stars, and at Ravinia in Highland Park, where he made his debut in 1966. It was for Ravinia that Lewis composed two commissioned works, the multimedia “Proclamation of Hope,” written for the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, and “To Know Her,” a full score for the Joffrey Ballet.