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Biography
Infobox musical artist| name = Lee Ritenour| image = LeeRitenour_Stockholm20090715.jpg| caption = Ritenour at the Stockholm Jazz Festival in 2009.| background = non_vocal_instrumentalist| birth_name = Lee Mack Ritenour| birth_date = Birth date and age|1952|1|11| birth_place = Los Angeles, California , United States | death_date =| alias = Captain Fingers| occupation = Musician , composer , record producer|producer | genre = Jazz , jazz-funk , jazz fusion , smooth jazz | instrument = Guitar , SynthAxe | years_active = 1975–present| label = Epic Records|Epic , Elektra Records|Elektra , GRP Records|GRP , PolyGram Records|PolyGram , Decca Records|Decca , Peak Records|Peak , Concord Records|Concord | notable_instruments = Gibson ES-335 Gibson L-5| website = http://www.leeritenour.com/ leeritenour.com Lee Mack Ritenour (born January 11, 1952) is an United States|American jazz guitarist who has recorded over 42 albums, appeared on over 3000 session musician|sessions , and has charted over 30 instrumental and vocal contemporary jazz hits since 1976.www.leeritenour.com One of his most popular songs was the smash hit, “Is It You” in 1981. Ritenour is considered to be a pioneer in the Contemporary Jazz and jazz-funk genres of music.Citation needed|date=August 2009. Guitar Player Magazine awarded him with a Lifetime Achievement Award for the year 2010. His highly acclaimed and popular 2010 hit album ''Lee Ritenour's 6 String Theory had numerous awards in 2011 including, Guitar Album of the Year – Guitar International Magazine. UK’s Guitarist Magazine: The #1 Best 50 Guitar Albums of 2010. JAZZIZ Magazine Publisher’s Album of the Year. Top Albums of 2010 from Canada’s “The Guardian”. Lee was awarded at the 2011 Echo Awards in Germany (the German Grammy awards) for Best International Instrumentalist (Guitar) in conjunction with the album, 6 String Theory )
Biography
Ritenour was born January 11, 1952 in Los Angeles, California. He played his first recording session|session when he was 16 with the Mamas & the Papas and given the moniker, "Captain Fingers", because of his manual dexterity on the guitar. Ritenour was a sought-after session musician|session guitar ist by the mid-1970s, and won Guitar Player Magazine's Best Studio Guitarist twice in the 1970s. He is noted for playing his red Gibson ES-335 and his Gibson L5 guitars.
One of his most notable influences is the pioneering jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery among others like Joe Pass , Kenny Burrell and John McLaughlin (musician)|John McLaughlin . His prolific career includes a Grammy Award for the collaborative work Harlequin (1985), and 19 other Grammy nominations. Ritenour also holds the distinction of having two of the promotional videos for his songs "Is It You" and "Mr. Briefcase" being played during MTV 's First 62 Videos aired on MTV|first day . Ritenour has been at the top of many guitar polls throughout the world.
Throughout his career, Ritenour has experimented with different styles of music. A true fusionist, he has often incorporated elements of funk , pop music|pop , rock music|rock , blues , brazilian music|Brazilian and most recently with Amparo (2008), classical music with jazz . In the early 1980s, Ritenour was given his own Ibanez Signature_(disambiguation)|signature model guitar, the LR-10 . The LR-10 was produced from 1981 to 1987. It can be heard exclusively on his album Rit . Currently, Ritenour plays the Gibson Guitar Corporation|Gibson s that he first played in the 1970s (the ES-335 and Gibson L5|L5 ), and now also plays his signature Lee Ritenour Model archtop guitar made by Gibson Guitar Corporation|Gibson .
Style
Ritenour's solo career began in 1975 with the recording of his album First Course . Released in 1976, the album gave a strong representation of the mid-1970s L.A. Jazz/Funk sound. Critics did, however, complain that his first album was "lightweight." So Lee countered this with his strongly crossover jazz|crossover -based follow up, Captain Fingers . This was followed by two more crossover efforts& mdash;''The Captain's Journey (1978) and Feel The Night (1979). On these albums, Ritenour primarily used something of a rich, yet rock-oriented distorted guitar sound, coming from his Gibson ES-335 guitar. In other instances on these albums, clean sounds were heard coming from his Gibson L5 and classical acoustic guitars (he played his classical acoustic guitars almost exclusively on his album Rio in 1979). In the 1970s, Ritenour would often use effects like wah-wah, phasers, chorus, and flangers on his electric instruments. Also, during the late 1970s, Ritenour can be heard using the 360 Systems guitar synthesizer (he is pictured sitting in front of it on the back cover of his Captain Fingers album). He can be heard using the synthesizer on the track Captain Fingers (from the album with the same title), and can also be heard playing solo with the synthesizer on the song "What Do You Want? " from The Captain's Journey .
In 1979, Ritenour "was brought in to beef up one of Pink Floyd 's The Wall s heaviest rock numbers, " Run Like Hell "." http://books.google.com/books? id=2I0eaxtu6HEC& lpg=PA270& dq=%22Lee%20Ritenour%22%20%22Comfortably%20Numb%22& client=firefox-a& pg=PA270#v=onepage& q=& f=false Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story Of Pink Floyd by Mark Blake, page 270 He also played "uncredited rhythm guitar" on " One Of My Turns ". http://books.google.com/books? id=7Bc1YbCd7eAC& lpg=PP8& ots=tCB8lx-RPU& dq=%22Lee%20Ritenour%22%20%22Comfortably%20Numb%22& lr=& pg=PA80#v=onepage& q=lee%20ritenour& f=false The Complete Guide To The Music Of Pink Floyd by Andy Mabbett, page 80Cite web|url= http://www.pinkfloydfan.net/t1480-david-gilmour-inside-mind-pink.html|title=Inside the Mind of Pink Floyd: David Gilmour|publisher=Guitar |date=September 1995|accessdate=2010-07-29
As the 1980s began, Ritenour began to add stronger elements of pop to his music, beginning with Rit in 1981. For this, he kept with his distorted sound, now using his Ibanez LR-10 signature model guitar. One of tracks from "Rit", entitled, "Is It You" featuring vocals from Eric Tagg became a hit reaching number fifteen on the pop chart and number twenty-seven on the soul chart.cite book |title= Top R& B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-2004|last=Whitburn |first=Joel |authorlink=Joel Whitburn |year=2004 |publisher=Record Research |page=494 He continued with the pop-oriented music for two albums after Rit ( Rit/2 in 1982 and Banded Together in 1984), while releasing a slick, yet more crossover-styled, Direct to Disk Recording|Direct-Disk instrumental album in 1983 called On The Line . He also provided rhythm guitar on Tom Browne (trumpeter)|Tom Browne 's hit, ''Funkin' for Jamaica . In 1985, he recorded his first album for GRP Records|GRP with Dave Grusin , entitled Harlequin . It featured Lee primarily on his classical acoustic guitar and also featured Brazilian singer/songwriter Ivan Lins . Up to this point, this album along with Rio arguably gave the strongest representation of Lee's Brazilian influences.
The following year, 1986, Ritenour released the album Earth Run , which featured him using the then-newly designed SynthAxe guitar. He used nine different guitars on the album, most notably the SynthAxe , his Valley Arts guitar, and his Gibson Guitar Corporation|Gibson Chet Atkins acoustic. The album also featured long-time collaborator Phil Perry for the first time, on the track "If I'm Dreaming, Don't Wake Me" — a song also featuring David Foster and Maurice White . He also produced songs and played guitar on Deniece Williams 's LP Hot on the Trail during that same year.
Ritenour continued in a direction strongly featuring other artists in 1987, with Portrait . The album itself has something of a strong smooth-jazz sound, and Ritenour can be heard here playing with The Yellowjackets , Djavan , and Kenny G .Citation needed|date=April 2008!
In 1988, his smooth jazz-influenced Brazilian music came to the forefront with Festival — another album strongly featuring his work on nylon-string acoustic guitars. The following album, Color Rit , continued with a similar mood. He did however, change direction completely again with his straight-ahead jazz album Stolen Moments . Sounding similar to Wes Montgomery , Ritenour played alongside long-time collaborator, saxophonist Ernie Watts , pianist Alan Broadbent , bassist John Patitucci (playing only acoustic) and drummer Harvey Mason . Continuing in a Wes Montgomery mood, Ritenour paid tribute to the man himself in 1992, with his album Wes Bound . The album featured a number of covers of Montgomery compositions, as well as some seemingly tributary pieces from Ritenour himself.
Also seen in this decade was a 1994 collaboration album with guitarist Larry Carlton called Larry & Lee .
In 1991 Lee Ritenour, together with keyboard player Bob James (musician)|Bob James , formed the Grammy-nominated contemporary jazz group Fourplay . Lee left the hugely successful group in 1998 to continue with his own solo works. He was replaced by Larry Carlton .
2002 saw the release of his album, ''Rit's House .
In February 2004, Ritenour completed a project looking back on his career involving musicians he has worked with throughout his career called Overtime . Overtime was recorded live in a studio in front of a small audience. It was released in early 2005, and is currently available as a singular audio CD, double-DVD set or singular HD DVD. Some of the musicians featured include Dave Grusin , Patrice Rushen , Harvey Mason , Alex Acuna , Taylor Dayne , Nathan East , Chris Botti , Anthony Jackson (musician)|Anthony Jackson , Melvin Lee Davis , and Ernie Watts , amongst many others.
His album entitled ''Smoke n' Mirrors'' was released in late August 2006. His son Wesley makes his debut appearance as a drummer on the album at the age of 13. This album contains Ritenour's version of Bill Withers ' 1978 hit " Lovely Day (song)|Lovely Day ".
Ritenour joined the 10th annual The Independent Music Awards|Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musician s' careers. http://www.independentmusicawards.com/judges Independent Music Awards http://miccontrolblog.com/2009/05/27/the-independent-music-awards-announces-judges-for-9th-annual-imas/ MicControl http://top40-charts.com/news/Charts-Awards/She-& -Him-The-Black-Keys-Mark-Hoppus-Aimee-Mann-And-Bettye-LaVette-Join-Judging-Panel-For-The-9th-Annual-Independent-Music-Awards/48785.html Top40-Charts.com He was also a judge for the 8th and 9th Independent Music Awards. http://www.independentmusicawards.com/ima_new/imajudges2009.asp Independent Music Awards - 8th Annual IMA Judges
In June 2010, in order to celebrate his fifty years as a guitarist, Lee Ritenour released the album 6 String Theory (in reference to 6 musical areas covered by the use of guitar). http://guitarinternational.com/wpmu/2010/06/29/ritenour/ Lee Ritenour discusses his "6 String Theory" for Guitar International The album featured famous guitarists such as Steve Lukather , Neal Schon , John Scofield , Slash (musician)|Slash , Pat Martino , Mike Stern , George Benson and B.B.King , but also younger players such as Andy McKee , Joe Robinson (musician)|Joe Robinson and Guthrie Govan . Ritenour, YamahaCorporation, The Berklee College of Music, Concord Records, Monster Cable, and D'Addario Strings collaborated to create the 2010 Yamaha 6 String Theory Guitar Competition. The winner of that international competition, that included guitarists from over 45 countries, was 16-year-old Canadian classical guitarist Shon Boublil. The competition in 2011 is continuing.
Discography
Date
Title
Label
1976
First Course
Epic #EK 46114
1977
Lee Ritenour and His Gentle Thoughts
JVC #VDJ-1001
1977
Captain Fingers
Epic #PE 34426
1977
Sugar Loaf Express
JVC #JIMI-2008-2
1978
Friendship (Different from 1979 release)
Jasrac #VDJ-1003
1978
'' The Captain's Journey
Elektra #6E-136
1979
Rio
GRP Records #GRD-9524
1979
Feel the Night
Discovery #71010
1979
Friendship (Currently reissued with ''The Captain's Journey on Wounded Bird Records)
http://www.leeritenour.com/ Lee Ritenour official site
http://www.playjazzguitar.com/lee_ritenour.html Lee Ritenour
http://www.jazzguitar.be/lee_ritenour_guitar_tabs.html Lee Ritenour Guitar Licks
4play Persondata | NAME =Ritenour, Lee | ALTERNATIVE NAMES = | SHORT DESCRIPTION = | DATE OF BIRTH =January 11, 1952 | PLACE OF BIRTH = Los Angeles, California , United States | DATE OF DEATH = | PLACE OF DEATH = DEFAULTSORT:Ritenour, Lee Category:American jazz guitarists Category:Smooth jazz guitarists Category:American session musicians Category:Musicians from California Category:1952 births Category:Living people Category:Grammy Award winners Category:University of Southern California alumni Category:GRP Records artists Category:Epic Records artists Category:Elektra Records artists Category:Warner Bros. Records artists
