Ramsey Lewis – Look-A-Here

Back in the days before all the radio stations were bought up by a media oligopoloy and standardized to a handful of formats (and then blind-sided by the iPod), you could hear all sorts of cool stuff that could never get airtime today. Case in point, WSDM FM in Chicago, “The Station With The Girls”, put several tunes off of Ramsey Lewis Newly Recorded All-Time, Non-Stop Golden Hits into rotation when I was a kid, triggering my acquiring and wearing out the album and a big jump in my love of funky keyboards.

Over the years I dug further into Ramsey’s back catalog. Although he’s very much jazz for decades, he still brings the funk. I particularly love his older stuff, his funky piano playing, his 60s hits, and many of the beautiful tunes he made crossing many genres before his breakout hits in the 60s.

…which brings me to Look-A-Here. I’ve dated the song to 1963 or earlier, which would make him at most 28 when he recorded it. I can’t get enough of this song. It has about infinite relistenability for me. I love the song, and you’ve probably never heard of it, and that’s OK.

It’s a piano solo for the whole song, more than three minutes, so here I present the entire song with me playing along with Ramsey. I think it’s pretty close.

(Buy the original… iTunes, Amazon.)

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~ by killersolos on May 4, 2010.