The Tale of Ramsey Lewis And the In Crowd

Chicago, 1961. The city’s hottest nightlife destination is bursting at the seams. Tourists, prom dates, birthday celebrants, and as always, elegant cosmopolitan couples on their high-flying night out. You’re waiting next to the stage, in the wings, ready to perform, with that empty stage stretching out right in front of you, trying not to think about how there are critics back there in the shadows. Maybe in the back of the room. Waiting to strike. Music is an all-or-nothing career and you don’t need them to like you--you need them to love you.

You hear your name. It's your time to shine! You walk onstage and look out from the bandstand at all  those faces. Smiling. Maybe a little tipsy. You’re not fooled. They’ve got high--maybe impossible--expectations.  This is the stage where they first saw Streisand and Cosby and Dizzy...and here you are...well, who are you anyway? The big question at this place is whether their night out is gonna feature one of those historic debuts, or just the pleasant background sounds of some band of forgettables.

You want this to go perfectly, so you start with some gentle dinner music--maybe to calm your own nerves. Soft, innoffensive easy listening. You start to loosen up--seems like it's going OK.  Nobody's booing...but something’s not quite right. They’re turning back to their plates, their drinks, their conversation. They're not really be listening. Toes aren't tapping. Uh oh.

Then there he is in front of you. An intuitive presence like the voice deep in the back of your head: George Marienthal, the owner of Mister Kelly’s and one of the men in this town who knows what to do with talent. Ever since 1955 when he and his brother Oscar put a gal named Barbara Carroll behind the piano on this very stage and made his club a centerpiece of culture in the city.  His face is naturally stubborn, even pugnacious.  Right now there’s just a hint of irritation. Are you about to get yanked from the stage?

“Listen,” he says calmly, “I didn’t hire you to play dinner music.”

You take this in, trying to figure out what he means. Are you in trouble? Are you fi--

“I hired you to play YOUR music,” he says, “So play it.”

And there it is. That’s all you needed to hear. You know what to do now.  Without missing a beat, you launch into something that’ll make them put down those forks and glasses.

From here on out, you’re heading straight for the In-crowd, and you’ll make this stage your home.

The musician in this story? Ramsey Lewis, famous for the hit “The In Crowd” which was one of the greatest jazz crossover singles of all time. His trio cracked the pop charts of the swinging 60’s (no lyrics required), launching a great, great career that is still far from over. My father George Marienthal, once a shoe and coffee salesman, had grown to be a great lover of music, and even before Lewis’s big hit broke, he and his brother Oscar had correctly identified Lewis as true talent, and they put him on stage.

Marienthal Reunion With Lewis

55 years after his first night, and after many decades of world-class performing and innovating (including many summers and prom seasons at Dad’s club) Lewis was kind enough to grant an interview to reminisce about his career, and my father’s role in it. 

From my perspective as the son who eschewed the swanky glamor that George and Oscar brought to Chicago for ‘60’s hippie minimalism, I feel I still owe everyone involved in that special community a debt of appreciation. Who better than to help me pay it off than one of the purest musical talents to ever graced their stage?

To make the interview even more interesting I was able to bring another friend along, and excellent pianist by the name of Bob Mamet. He created an album based on his inspiration of all the pianists at the London House called, The London House Blues. Together we chatted with Lewis.

I told Lewis about my earliest memories of watching him play the piano. It was actually at my family’s apartment on Wellington, at mom and dad’s private parties. I was 10 years old and he was just about the coolest jazz musicians I’d ever seen. There was a zip and a pep and an impeccable timing to every note.  He told me the story about how he’d actually started out playing not at Mister Kelly’s, but at another of dad’s clubs called The London House.

From Off-Night Guy to Headliner With One Song

“I started as the night guy,” he says, “Me and Eddie Higgins. I think he was the off-night guy, and then he moved to Florida. Then I became the off night guy, one or two nights a week, and then I had a hit record, and all of sudden I wasn’ t the off night guy anymore. But, I remember [earlier]...going across the Wabash Avenue bridge, going to my piano lessons when I was a teenager, so I must’ve been, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and looking to my left it said, ‘Make a date with a steak tonight. Underneath it said Oscar Peterson and George Sharing, Earl Garner. And I just licked my chops, and continued on to my lesson. Little did I know that one day I would be headlining London House. And that was huge thrill!”

One of the highlights of our interview was when we asked him about his journey from the substitute off-night guy to a jazz legend.

“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 eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth 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!”

Carrying the Torch To the Finish Line

Lewis played many prom seasons and summers at the London House after his big breakthrough success. I’m very proud that my family members were able to spot his talent before the rest of the world caught on, and I know they valued his friendship all the way to the end of the road. In fact, Lewis ended up with the sad but undying honor of being the last act to play at the London house when it closed.

Partly because of ill health, my father sold his interest in the club to Leisure Arts Corp in 1969. Then in 1972, he died.  Ramsey Lewis was quoted in the paper about it. “When he died,” he said “music in Chicago lost a good man.”

The guy who bought the London House from my father, along with Mister Kelly’s, was named Paul Wimmer. When it was announced that the club was closing he was interviewed for the paper, and explained that the London House didn’t get the same street traffic that Kelly’s did, so he had to choose to close it and keep Mister Kelly’s alive.

Ramsey Lewis was also interviewed for the amazing piece that was written about the closing of the London House in the Chicago Tribune. Here’s his quote, and a bit more from the article that came out at that time:

“‘You know, it’s only by chance that I’m going to be the last act here. But it feels like an honor anyway—to finish up all the great moments in music that happened here. So I feel like I owe it to all of them—to all the great musicians who played here, and to all the people who came to listen all those years—to play my best. I’m going to play my heart out.’

And he did.  His quartet played for more than an hour on the first set. Ramsey never stopped, never let up. He played the last respects for all of them—for Duke and Dizzy, for Shearing and Tatum, for all of them. He’s filling the last breath of an old place full of life.”

-Chicago Tribune, “London House Jazz Ending On A Blue Note” Jan 5, 1975

Mister Kelly’s closed soon after the London House, in August of 1975. Lewis carried on the spirit, went on to a fabulous career performing around the world, and will go down in music history. In fact, he’s still making history as we speak! “In Crowd” entered the US top 10 about fifty years ago and was recently used in the soundtrack of Woody Allan’s film Irrational Man. It was one of Allen’s most overt uses of a piece of music in a long time, and it was also a small first, in that he’d never used a bona fide pop hit before.

London House May Have Closed, But Lewis Was Just Getting Started!

I’m happy to report that Lewis is still performing at age 80. In our interview, he sounds like he has no plans to stop. He just says, “Yeah, I don’t believe in standing still, you know? I enjoy playing piano, and wherever in the world they say come and play the piano, my wife and I just get on the plane and play the piano.” I’m sure glad to hear that, because wherever he goes, he brings with him a small part of my father’s legacy that can still make hearts dance.