It’s impossible to think of Ramsey Lewis without humming along to ‘The In Crowd’. Eighty today Lewis performed the Billy Page song that became the title track of his live album with bassist Eldee Young and drummer Isaac ‘Redd’ Holt recorded at the Bohemian Caverns in Washington DC 50 years ago.

A hit in the R&B charts, also rising high in Billboard’s hot singles chart the album picked up a Grammy the following year, Dobie Gray had covered the song the year before on the marvellously titled Dobie Gray Sings for ‘In’ Crowders That ‘Go Go’. But to jazz fans, actually to the vast majority of music fans 50 years on, it is synonymous with Lewis. In recent years both Javon Jackson and Gregory Porter have covered the song yet still it’s Ramsey Lewis’ trio version that  trumps all of these and the myriad of other versions out there.

Chicago born, Lewis was in local band the Cleffs as a teenager in which he first met his future trio partners Young and Holt. They began to record in the mid-1950s but their fame had to wait some nine years until The In Crowd came along. Their time together was short lived afterwards and the trio broke up just a year later. Lewis has programmed the Jazz at Ravinia festival in Illionois as artistic director for many years and his Foundation does much good work with young people. Recent albums of Lewis’ include Songs From the Heart in 2009 and in 2013 at the inaugural Jazz FM Awards in London Lewis performed and was awarded a gold award for his outstanding contribution to jazz.