Lee Ritenour

Born in Los Angeles in 1952, Lee Ritenour was playing guitar by eight, “serious” by 12, and soaking up everything that Sixties flashpoint had to offer. “My dad used to take me to hear Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, Joe Pass and Jim Hall,” he reflects. “But there were also the rock guys coming through LA back then, like Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. But Ritenour grew up fast, and from the late '60s he was a first-call sessioner for giants like Frank Sinatra, Pink Floyd, B.B. King and Tony Bennett. “I’d get called for Steely Dan or Quincy Jones would ask me to come by the studio at midnight,” he says of those gun-for-hire years. “Somebody once added up that I did 3,000 recordings for artists, movies and TV shows. It was incredible reaching the top tier as a studio musician. But I always had a desire to write my own songs and records – to be an artist.” In ’76 and ’77, Ritenour established his own solo career. For the next four decades, he would shift gears and outrun categorisation at every turn, from his pop crossover on 1981’s Rit, to winning a Grammy in 1985 for Early A.M. Attitude, and not forgetting Fourplay’s audacious jousts with fellow crème-de-la-crème musos Bob James (keys), Nathan East (bass) and Harvey Mason (drums). Perhaps his eclectic vision was best summed up by 2010’s hugely ambitious and star-studded 6 String Theory album.