Though he began as a jazz-trio pianist, Chicago-born Ramsey Lewis intersected with the worlds of soul, funk and fusion. Already a decade into his career, he found pop success with the hip contemporary sounds on 1965's The "In" Crowd. His late-'60s drummer Maurice White went on to form Earth, Wind & Fire, and that band backed Lewis on 1974's Sun Goddess, another hit that found him adding synthesizers and beginning a swing toward fusion. Toward the end of the '90s he returned to the acoustic trio format, which kept him grooving into the new millennium. Lewis died at his home in Chicago in 2022.