Customer Reviews

The Blues Piano Artistry of Meade Lux Lewis

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In 1961, the great Meade 'Lux' Lewis entered the studio with producer Chris Albertson to record this masterpiece of blues and boogie woogie piano. It's nothing short of a true wonder to hear Lewis on a grand piano, with superb sound quality, tickling and pounding the keys, playing strikingly modern-sounding music. For some strange reason, Lewis was considered something of a has-been at the time, but now, almost 43 years later, the music sounds as if it was recorded only yesterday. The grooves never quit, and harmonically, Lewis pulls a few amazing stunts. He also plays the celeste on three tracks, which has often been sneered at by critics, but the music-box effect is surprisingly beautiful, and somehow it all fits in very nicely. If you only want to buy one blues piano cd in your lifetime, this one is not at all a bad choice.

This is the best collection of Meade Lux Lewis that I have found and if you love Boogie Woogie piano playing, as I do, he is one of the big three piano players and I think you will enjoy this. There is also a Bluebird Sampler disc out in the marketplace that has one or two of his songs and is a very good sampler if you are just getting into this type of music.

I am so happy to find this record. The music is probably only four stars, but I gave it five because it features an instrument called 'the Celeste' It is a keyboard device, that plays bell-like metal tubes. Most people know it from the "Nut Cracker" ballet piece called Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies. I have heard the celeste only on one other jazz recording, that one from another Chicago Blues piano man, Jimmie Yancey.

After hearing this recording, I wonder why it has not been used more in small groups. I can only imagine what 'the Modern Jazz Quartet' could have sounded like with a Celeste sometimes rather than the Vibes.

Lewis does hit some Yancey riffs once in a while on this one, but this is not a nostalgia record. Lewis is creating his own sound, contemporary to the time it was made. He was not frozen in amber, re-playing 30's honky tonk blues.