Quad LP/Tape Poll Lewis, Ramsey, Trio: Upendo Ni Pamoja [SQ/Q8]

[EMB]

Columbia CQ 31096, from 1972.


Side 1:

1. Slipping into Darkness
2. People Make the World Go Round
3. Please Send Me Someone To Love
4. Got To Be There
5. Conicerto De Aranjuez

Side 2:

1. Upendo Ni Pamoja (Love is Together)
2. Trilogy: Morning/the Nite Before/Eternal Peace
3. Put Your Hand in the Hand
4. Collage



ED

 

[Quad Linda]

9. Chicago's own Ramsey Lewis ably assisted by Cleveland Eaton on bass and Morris Jennings on drums. A good Quad mix, considering it's just three guys. Great performances. Some very good covers. The title track (translation: Love is Together) is the real gem here. I have this one on SQ, Q8 and CD.



While you're at it, be sure to pick up these gems in 2ch:

ANYTHING on Chess/Cadet by Ramsey.


One day, while playing my copy of Funky Serentity in my store, a client insisted that I sell it to him. Cleveland Eaton's Dreams is an ten minute funky, acoustic bass & electric piano laden excursion. Best track here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jUgE4SNmnY


Same trio with Earth, Wind & Fire. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAH8vk_O3eo

 

[EMB]

An '8' from me...good album, great mix.

I've been a Ramsey fan since I heard "In Crowd" on the radio and liked it better than the vocal version by Dobie Gray, which always seemed somewhat smug to me, for some reason, though in a way it did help define that crazy and wonderful era of pop music. And yeah, don't think I've ever heard even so much as a mediocre Ramsey album, for although not an innovator and you usually knew what you were getting, he was great at finding grooves and riding them out without going on too long.

ED

 

[Quad Linda]

IMHO, everything up to Sun Goddess was good. Then, he tried to do very commercial funk/soul, often with vocals and I lost interest. He's tried other genres and to get back to his roots since. I haven't bothered, The Mercury, Chess/Cadet/Argo and early Columbia stuff is where it's at. Ramsey also began a second career DJ'ing on a Chicago "lite jazz" station in the early '80's.

 

[Circular Vibes]

Okay, I love this album. Any jazz lover, and maybe even classical lovers should have this. I am wowed by the fidelity on the 8-track. The separation was phenomenal, but not over the top like being early experimental. I am discovering Ramsey's Columbia stuff slowly. I had forgotten to play this when I got it. The only reasons I gave it a 9 are the bell on the beginning song of track 2 was distracting to me, and there were a couple of experimental/avant garde moments that sounded to me like the engineer was telling them to stretch it out to fill a side. There were elements of the Cadet years and also of the 70's funk movement as well as hints of classical bits too. This tape makes me wish there was a lot more Ramsey in multi-channel. I have been a fan of the trio since the early 80's when I found a copy of Jade East/Party Time on 45. Now to find the Movie Album to have all 3 quads in my collection.

 

[fredblue]

Sun Goddess was remixed into 5.1 and prepared for Surround SACD release by Sony 10+ years ago only to get cancelled (along with, as we know, a load of other good stuff)..

 

[Circular Vibes]

Sun Goddess was remixed into 5.1 and prepared for Surround SACD release by Sony 10+ years ago only to get cancelled (along with, as we know, a load of other good stuff)..

What a waste, I have that in stereo and play it in SQ. I would so buy that in 5.1.

 

[fredblue]

What a waste, I have that in stereo and play it in SQ. I would so buy that in 5.1.

Makes me sad.. it's a superb album (pans out quite well in ProLogic II) hopefully Audio Fidelity will rescue it from the Sony vault soon!!

 

[Simon A]

Okay, I love this album. Any jazz lover, and maybe even classical lovers should have this. I am wowed by the fidelity on the 8-track. The separation was phenomenal, but not over the top like being early experimental. I am discovering Ramsey's Columbia stuff slowly. I had forgotten to play this when I got it. The only reasons I gave it a 9 are the bell on the beginning song of track 2 was distracting to me, and there were a couple of experimental/avant garde moments that sounded to me like the engineer was telling them to stretch it out to fill a side. There were elements of the Cadet years and also of the 70's funk movement as well as hints of classical bits too. This tape makes me wish there was a lot more Ramsey in multi-channel. I have been a fan of the trio since the early 80's when I found a copy of Jade East/Party Time on 45. Now to find the Movie Album to have all 3 quads in my collection.

I haven't heard the tape, but I find that from the very first track, the sound of the LP is very engaging. I like this one so much that I've played it three times today in a loop. I love the laid back performances. Due to the nature of the music and recording, I find that the mix actually serves the album well and fits with the vibe the band creates. I'll be coming back to this one often. I gave it an 8.

Before this, my favourite Stereo album of Lewis' was the Mother Nature's Son Beatles tribute album. I find it goes nicely with Booker T. & the MG's' McLemore Avenue.

 

[sjcorne]

I picked up the SQ LP at a record fair late last year, and the Q8 arrived on my doorstep today.

Content-wise, this is what I’d call laid-back and somewhat "avant-garde" jazz. It's far more accessible than something like Bitches Brew or Herbie Hancock's Sextant, but still not an album I could listen to all that often. A bit of a slow burn, but a nice listen if you're in the mood.

The quad mix is rather unusual, definitely not your typical ultra-discrete Columbia quad job. Ramsey's piano is in stereo across the rears, though there is some echo/bleed to the fronts. What's interesting is the treatment of the drums: on some tracks it sounds like you're in the middle of the kit, with the drums crashing in from all sides. Other tracks have the entire kit upfront with a heavy delay on the cymbal crashes hitting the rears. The placement of the bass varies too, sometimes it's front center and other times it's in the rears or even all four channels. There's even a moment where handclaps move from speaker to speaker clockwise around the room.

Considering the sparse amount of instruments (this is a three-piece ensemble) in play and the limitations of mixing for SQ (the LP through a Tate holds up surprisingly well next to the Q8), it's impressive they got this much out of it. I've heard surround mixes of albums with far more instrumentation that aren't this discrete. It's more of a classy low-key surround treatment, which in my opinion totally befits the music.

It gets an 8 from me. I'd support D-V tackling this one at some point.

 

[J. PUPSTER]

I picked up the SQ LP at a record fair late last year, and the Q8 arrived on my doorstep today.

Content-wise, this is what I’d call laid-back and somewhat "avant-garde" jazz. It's far more accessible than something like Bitches Brew or Herbie Hancock's Sextant, but still not an album I could listen to all that often. A bit of a slow burn, but a nice listen if you're in the mood.

The quad mix is rather unusual, definitely not your typical ultra-discrete Columbia quad job. Ramsey's piano is in stereo across the rears, though there is some echo/bleed to the fronts. What's interesting is the treatment of the drums: on some tracks it sounds like you're in the middle of the kit, with the drums crashing in from all sides. Other tracks have the entire kit upfront with a heavy delay on the cymbal crashes hitting the rears. The placement of the bass varies too, sometimes it's front center and other times it's in the rears or even all four channels. There's even a moment where handclaps move from speaker to speaker clockwise around the room.

Considering the sparse amount of instruments (this is a three-piece ensemble) in play and the limitations of mixing for SQ (the LP through a Tate holds up surprisingly well next to the Q8), it's impressive they got this much out of it. I've heard surround mixes of albums with far more instrumentation that aren't this discrete. It's more of a classy low-key surround treatment, which in my opinion totally befits the music.

It gets an 8 from me. I'd support D-V tackling this one at some point.

View attachment 37411

I'm listening to an Q8 conversion of this tonight (dts.wav) and I'm hearing Ramsey's Piano in rear and more the left rear, and sometimes a Fender Rhodes in the fronts. Drums in the front left with congas in front right. On Concierto De Aranjuez sounds like a bowed upright bass in phantom front center. So there are different placement of instruments depending on the song. But yes, I'd mainly like to hear Ramsey's keyboards up in the front channels, just because he's the leader and that's the focal instrument.

Other musicians are:
Acoustic Bass [Acoustical Bass], Electric Bass – Cleveland Eaton
Drums, Percussion – Morris Jennings
and Ramsey as Producer as well.

The version I have sounds a little distorted (fuzzy) overall, so a good mastering onto a modern digital format would be a god send.
Dutton Vocalion SACD Quad would do quite nicely!

I do enjoy just about anything Ramsey Lewis puts out, and this, I'm thrilled to have heard it in Quad. As mentioned before, they've done pretty well for three guys (with some multi-tracking.)

I'm giving this one an 8; may need to try flipping fronts to backs on some of these for my own taste

 

[humprof]

Not enough jazz in the polls! This is a good listen, and a great iteration of Ramsey’s trio. Moody, laid-back, soul-jazz covers and a couple of blues. (Plus Rodrigo’s “Concerto de Aranjuez”—was that Teo Macero’s idea?)

Macero supervised Russ Payne on the surround mix, and since I didn’t recognize the name, I had to look Payne up: Beverley Sills, The Andrews Sisters, and Charles Ives! (Old Songs Deranged with the Yale Theater Orchestra—now that I’d like to hear!)

The matrix mix just doesn’t cut it, at least not in the SMv1 decode I heard; everything’s in every channel. But the discrete mix is creative, especially with regard to spreading the drums & percussion around. That and the super-present bass make the trio sound a whole lot “bigger” than it is. I also don’t mind the default drums-in-front/keys-in-back; having that trippy/phase-y electric piano behind you on “Slipping Into Darkness,” for instance, is spookily effective. But the fact that the same effect—on both electric and acoustic—is kind of out-of-control on the title track and on “Trilogy” (ditto with Cleveland Eaton’s bass on “Trilogy” and “Collage,” and with the half-beat-early snare hits in the right rear channel throughout the album) makes me wonder whether it was truly intentional. It gets more and more distracting as the album goes on, I find.

An “8” with an asterisk.

 

[J. PUPSTER]

Not enough jazz in the polls! This is a good listen, and a great iteration of Ramsey’s trio. Moody, laid-back, soul-jazz covers and a couple of blues. (Plus Rodrigo’s “Concerto de Aranjuez”—was that Teo Macero’s idea?)

Macero supervised Russ Payne on the surround mix, and since I didn’t recognize the name, I had to look Payne up: Beverley Sills, The Andrews Sisters, and Charles Ives! (Old Songs Deranged with the Yale Theater Orchestra—now that I’d like to hear!)

The matrix mix just doesn’t cut it, at least not in the SMv1 decode I heard; everything’s in every channel. But the discrete mix is creative, especially with regard to spreading the drums & percussion around. That and the super-present bass make the trio sound a whole lot “bigger” than it is. I also don’t mind the default drums-in-front/keys-in-back; having that trippy/phase-y electric piano behind you on “Slipping Into Darkness,” for instance, is spookily effective. But the fact that the same effect—on both electric and acoustic—is kind of out-of-control on the title track and on “Trilogy” (ditto with Cleveland Eaton’s bass on “Trilogy” and “Collage,” and with the half-beat-early snare hits in the right rear channel throughout the album) makes me wonder whether it was truly intentional. It gets more and more distracting as the album goes on, I find.

An “8” with an asterisk.

So were you also hearing Ramsey's piano mainly in the left rear?

 

[humprof]

So were you also hearing Ramsey's piano mainly in the left rear?

I'd have to listen again, but mostly (entirely?) in both, I think--out of phase from channel-to-channel. Maybe one or the other of us--or both--have conversions from a hinky tape? I've never heard the album in stereo, as a reference.

 

[Clement]

Okay, i'm going with a 9 on this one. I was tempted to go with an 8, but this one feels more special than that. Granted, part of my score is a sentimental attraction due to the fact that i served Ramsey Lewis many nights at a member's only club at Ravinia Music Festival, and he was a true gentleman and someone devoted to his art and mentoring young musicians. Another reason i find myself bumping the score is the sheer volume of music on this release. I recollect being mildly upset as a kid whenever an album wasn't at least 40 minutes long (20 minutes per side); this one clocks in at just over 54 minutes, and that's a LOT of bang for my musical buck! As others have noted, the real drawback here is that there's ultimately not a lot to do, surround-wise, with a piano jazz trio. And yet, there are some nice surround moments: the handclaps in "Slipping Into Darkness" particularly come to mind, as they bounce diagonally and surprisingly throughout the song that already has a nice, trippy, eerie feel thanks to Lewis on the Fender Rhodes. Lewis was always good on covers, as @EMB notes having scored his first hit with "The 'In' Crowd," and in addition to the aforementioned "Slipping Into Darkness," his take on Michael Jackson's "Got to Be There" is especially good. I'm also a huge fan of Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez," so that helps nudge my vote up as well. I'm with @Quad Linda – the title track is the standout here, and the piano jazz trio feels so much bigger because of the quad mix (well, and the extra percussion filling out the soundscape); Lewis has a nice, funky touch on piano on the track. All in all, i'm very happy to have heard this and i sincerely hope it finds its way onto a digital physical release so others can enjoy it. At this point, i'm not set up for streaming, but that would be nice too (perhaps it already exists!). I listened to the SQ LP through the SM v.2. Stay Surrounded, Comrades!