@henridelagardere264

1 year ago

“The original seven-piece group broke up, and the rhythm section was left: Eldee on bass, Red on drums. We stayed together for many a year until finally we fell out love. But, before doing that we made that record called, The In Crowd.’ We were putting out our thirteenth or fourteenth album, and it was just by chance that Dobie Gray had this vocal—in fact I think he might have written “The In Crowd.” The three of us, Eldee and Red I were in Washington D.C. at this coffee shop and somebody--I’ll never forget her name: Nettie Grey— said, ‘What do you guys doing?’ And we told her. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘there’s this record by Dobie Gray you might like,’ and she played it on the jukebox, and Eldee and Red they had heard it, and liked it, and said, ‘Yeah, yeah, you know we have all the other songs in the album. We just need this one song!’” “We’d gotten in the habit the last four, five albums, starting with the 11th, 12th, 13th album, of putting a song called a ‘fun song.’ So it was our fun song on this album. We put it on there and the Chess Brothers released it, I think in May or June, and then somewhere around September we got a call. We were playing some club in Detroit, and we got a call from Leonard or Phil Chess—I forgot which one—[saying] ‘I think you guys got a hit record!’ You know, in those days—late fifties, early 60s, jazz artists weren’t looking for a hit record, we didn’t even know what that was!” Ramsey Lewis, interviewed by David Marienthal and Tory Foster, Feb 9, 2017 The song is ended, but the melody lingers on. R.I.P. Thanks for the memory ... and the music!

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