Billboard : 12/19/1960
Jazz Spotlight Winner

Recorded at the now defunct Blue Note club in Chicago, the Ramsey Lewis Trio makes exhilarating jazz on this set. The group sounds tighter and more explosive than ever, and Lewis’ piano is sharp and percussive. While touches of Jamal are still evident, Ramsey seems to be touching something else as well, an earthiness that becomes evident in the moving gospel-like Folk Ballad, Delilah, Carmen, and the C.C. Rider theme. All should get lots of play. A strong set from Lewis.

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Cashbox : 12/24/1960

Chicago’s Blue Note Club, where this set was cut, played host to the Lewis Trio just before it shut its doors. A warm, personal, friendly place, it was easy to quickly establish rapport with the audience, which is just what Lewis does here. The group lends its sunny disposition to Old Devil Moon, I’ll Remember April, But Not For Me and What’s New. Good, listenable, uncomplicated jazz trio.

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Portland Press Herald
Larry Cotton : 01/26/1961

Among the better jazz combos is the Ramsey Lewis Trio, which has a special claim to fame in that it’s the only group ever to record an album before a live audience at Chicago’s Blue Note. This recording, entitled The Ramsey Lewis Trio in Chicago and just issued by Argo, is something of a posthumous release because the Blue Note is dead – closed after 10 eventful years as Chicago’s Jazz center because the near North Side has replaced the Loop as the Windy City’s entertainment heart.

Ramsey Lewis is a good pianist; Eldee Young and Redd Holt are more than adequate on the bass and drums respectively. All have a thorough understanding of ultramodern jazz and each is able to anticipate the others’ feelings.

On the night of the recording date the trio was at its best, aided to no end by an enthusiastic audience. The result is a fine album for jazz fans.

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Down Beat : 02/02/1961
Leonard Feather : 2 stars

The best thing about this album is the liner notes. Jack Tracy’s comments on the passing of Chicago’s Blue Note (this was the first and last LP recorded there) are warm, affectionate, and consistently sincere. The music often doesn’t attempt to be.

The trio now goes in for little pianistic curlicues, sudden shifts of dynamics for melodramatic effect (the brouhaha at Bar 27 of the first chorus of What’s New is a good sample), trick endings, drum antics with an obvious comedy aim (But Not for Me), and even moments of sheer cocktail corn. Yet there are many moments when everyone settles down to the business of swinging.

Schoen is a bass solo, expertly performed by Young. Folk Ballad sounds, from beginning to end, like an introduction. Throughout the whole six minutes you wonder when they are going to move into tempo for the first chorus. Yet on rehearing it, you may find this the most attractive and mood-sustaining track in the set.

Lewis today is moving toward the stage at which all the critics will put him down while the big spenders will take him up. If he’s bowing to Basin Street East, good luck to him; he’ll do great, with no help (and no need of help) from us experts. And no matter how mannered some of the music on these sides, perhaps we should accentuate the positive by reminding ourselves that he still can swing firmly, still does at times, and is still seven leagues ahead of Liberace.

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Liner Notes by Jack Tracy

Mention the Blue Note to any jazz fan, especially one who lives around Chicago, and you’re likely to be answered by, “Wasn’t that a shame?”

Because just a few weeks after this album was recorded there, the club that for more than a decade had hosted every top name in jazz had to shut down. The entertainment center of Chicago moved from the Loop across the river to the Near North side, and the Blue Note was left isolated, head still high but without a nickel in its jeans.

A lot of us who had been regulars at Frank Holzfeind’s establishment ever since he first opened remembered the big years and were unhappy. Years when it was just about the only game in town, and you could walk in and hear Basie or Kenton or Woody or Brown or James or even Elliot Lawrence or Charlie Parker with strings or Lester Young carefully picking his way through the audience after a set to head back to the dressing room where the gin was poured in larger than one-ounce quantities.

Or the one bill some years ago that featured Maxine Sullivan, Doc Evans‘ band, Slim Gaillard‘s trio, and a young, good-looking pop singer named Harry Belafonte. Or Charlie Ventura in the halcyon days with Jackie and Roy singing those wild lines and drawing crowds of the size that Miles and Jamal do now. Or Lee Wiley and Bobby Hackett, or Red Norvo, or Lennie Tristano, or Duke Ellington playing the annual Christmas parties at which kids who could barely walk heard their first big band and were big-eyed. Or Sarah Vaughan coming in time after time, year after year.

It was one helluva club, believe me, and if you never made it there you missed something.

Ramsey Lewis got there just under the wire and it was almost like old times the Saturday night we recorded him. Al greeted you at the door and Frank was already in his office (first table to the right as you walked in), martini at hand.

The audience was of healthy size, and it included a couple of disc jockeys who dropped in to see what was happening and a night life columnist who used to fall by almost every night for a quick blast before being subjected to such indignities as having to review Liberace.

The trio was comfortably set up on the big bandstand that was really designed for Kenton and Basie and those-type housewreckers.

Not much happened the first set. Ramsey and Eldee and Red were conscious of the recording mikes and were playing safe. They skated easily through Bags’ Groove and Greensleeves and two or three more, sounded good, got a nice hand, and that was about it.

The next two sets were something else. The trio forgot about the mikes and began playing to the audience. They had no difficulty establishing the warm rapport they almost always get with people, and thus nourished by sincere applause and attention, they opened up.

This 38 minutes of music is the cream of those two sets. By the fourth set the crowd had thinned considerably, the piano was drifting noticeably out of tune (Ramsey and Oscar Peterson not only play pianos, they almost destroy them at a single sitting), and the party was just about over.

You judge for yourself how good the music is. I am of the opinion it’s the best the group has ever sounded on records. Happy, dynamic, swinging, colorful, it is the sort of trio you are not likely to forget once you hear it.

At the end of by evening, Frank, fresh martini held in steady grip, mentioned idly, “You know, in all the years we’ve been going, no one has ever cut an album at the Blue Note before. Ramsey’s will he the first.” It will also he the last. But it’s a good one, and that’s the way it should be.