You’d think at 16 years old, playing a session with the Mamas & the Papas back in the swinging sixties (and dubbed “Captain Fingers” for manual dexterity on the guitar) would have gone to Lee Ritenour’s head. It did not. The adulation poured on him in those early days, he poured right back into perfecting the guitar playing that, to this day, he loves most, and will share with audiences over the weekend at Blues Alley. Since that first session in 1968, Ritenour, composer, recording artist and producer, has appeared on more than 3,000 sessions, recorded 42-plus albums and has charted more than 30 instrumental and vocal contemporary jazz hits since 1976. These days, touring is a particularly satisfying pursuit for the man whose Top 15 hit, “Is It You” has become a contemporary jazz radio classic and who has recorded with the likes of George Benson, B.B. King, Chris Botti and Ernie Watts.
| Onstage |
| Lee Ritenour |
| Where: Blues Alley Jazz Supper Club, 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW |
| When: 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Friday through Sunday |
| Info: $43, 202-337-4141; bluesalley.com |
“The other night I played in Miami to 2,500 people,” he said earlier this week. “Then in Orlando [there were] 400 people. It varies constantly from the big stage to the small stage.”
Ritenour has brought a drummer from Atlanta, Sonny Emory, a bass player, Melvin Davis, with whom he has worked in countless sessions, and the great keyboard player, Jesse Millner. He has also brought three guitars with him – his Lee Ritenour Gibson L5 Signature arch top guitar, his Yamaha silent classical-electrical guitar and his valued Les Paul guitar.
“Les Paul was an influence for almost every electric guitar player,” Ritenour continued. “Because of his inventions and the way he also helped create all this multitracking recording, we are all so comfortable these days. He just had an impact on everyone, you know?”
But for Ritenour, it was as much about the music as about the technology of what his idol accomplished: the invention of the Les Paul guitar and what it meant for rock, blues and jazz guitar playing.
Calling himself a true version of a fusionist, Ritenour will play jazz, funk, rock, blues, classical, country and Brazilian music — in other words, he says, “I’m a guitarist.”
For the Blues Alley shows, Ritenour and his band perform from a long list of songs that span from the late 1970s to 2011. This includes his latest recording, “Lee Ritenour’s 6 String Theory” that garnered him Guitar International Magazine’s “Guitar Album of the Year Award” and “The #1 Best 50 Guitar Albums of 2010” award from the United Kingdom’s Guitarist Magazine.
“There’s so much different material [that] it’s really a fun show,” he said.
