Party Time

Recorded for the album Up Pops Ramsey Lewis, released in 1967 on Cadet Records, featuring Lewis on piano with his working trio of Cleveland Eaton on bass and Maurice White on drums. The track exemplified Lewis's commercially successful crossover between jazz and soul-funk, continuing the formula that had made him a mainstream star following the 1965 hit 'The In Crowd', and appealing to both jazz and R&B audiences on Cadet's roster. Maurice White's drumming on Lewis's Cadet recordings, including this session, directly informed the rhythmic vocabulary he later deployed as founder of Earth, Wind & Fire, making tracks like this a foundational link between soul-jazz and 1970s funk.