Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsDisappointing drop in excellence
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 5, 2010
If you like your jazz piano cleanly recorded (very pristine clarity) with smooth sounding backing strings and vocal chorus plus horns kept to a minimum except for the odd sax solo (Grover Washington style) then welcome to 1990s hi fidelity jazz, Ramsey Lewis style. You will in such a case no doubt love this compilation of a selection of the best of Ramsey Lewis recordings when he was with the GRP record label across that decade.
However if you long for the Ramsey of the late 60s & 70s as I do, with funky grooving music and inventive arrangements plus creative interpretations of other's songs (especially from the Beatles songbook) then I fear this will all come as a great disappointment. This is typified best by the 1993 rendering here of "Julia" from the Beatles White album, which had appeared before on what is for me probably Ramsey's greatest recording moment, the 1969 LP "Mother Nature's Son". However here it is just so clean and soulless it loses the simplicity and beauty of the original and Ramsey's stunning prior interpretation. This recording may show technical excellence all around but for me it sadly feels too much like jazz muzak which I do not personally enjoy.
