Ramsey Lewis & Nancy Wilson - The Two of Us (Japan Blu-spec CD) (2011)

Now this is a great album but,fact is this isnt a full one duet album between Ramsey Lewis and Nancy Wilson. It's primarily a Ramsey Lewis solo album with his regular band featuring a handful of songs featuring Nancy on vocals. After the generally more 70's styled production of Les Fleurs it became time for Ramsey to start more heavily acknowledging the more electronic/synthesizer sounds of the mid 80's. For that he went to non other than Stanley Clarke who the same year was heading in the exact same direction with his Time Exposure. There are two numers that really point to that concept better than anything else. Both are electro-funk/break dance type numbers that,while very modern for there time are still rooted strongly in 70's style jazz-funk arrangements and rhythms as opposed to more brittle hip-hop/electronica beats. "Ram" is the faster of the two tunes with some sparese vocals and Ramsey working his Chicago style soul-jazz piano anywhere he finds a place for it. "Breaker Beat",being more midtempo is the funkier of the two and has some great 80's jazz-funk synthesizer swirls to boot. "Quiet Storm" has a more fluid Grover Washington Jr. style groove and relies heavy of Paul Jackson holding the trio rhythm section into place. "Closer Than Close" is a similarly styled vocal piece but the vocal is by the fine male singer Daryl Coley,not Nancy Wilson. She does show up on three elegantly produced and arranged urban R&B/pop/jazz tunes "Midnight Rendezvous","Slippin' Away",'Never Wanna Say Goodnight" and the title song,all of which find a balance between the "retro neuvo" sound of Anita Baker and Will Downing later in the decade and what people like Patti Austin and James Ingram was doing around this same time. In that respect it captures urban contemporary vocal pop/jazz as it were in a state of transition. The final cut on the album is an original Ramsey composition "Song With Words (Remembering),a swirling solo piano number that interestingly enough would've been just about perfect for Nancy's vocals but actually surives more than well on it's own without it. As a Nancy Wilson duet album this isn't particularly complete though all of her contributions are strong additions to the album. As it stands this is an excellent Ramsey Lewis album and one of his very finest of the period.
-- Andre S. Grindle