More than a little had changed in the world between 1956 and 1968, but perhaps the biggest change in Ramsey Lewis' music happened when Charles Stepney came into the fold, not that the average listener (such as myself) would have known that specifically. Some reinventions, though, are evident without an obvious mile marker, and we don't need a Ken Burns documentary to tell us something we can learn by simply using our ears. The music changed. Stepney, as he did for countless others, helped to guide Lewis into a fully formed sound while providing some truly wild arrangements. Arrangements nobody else was replicating to quite the same effect.

Drop the needle on Ramsey's 1971 LP Back To The Roots and note the fire level jump considerably on the two tracks Stepney is on. They're not dissimilar to the other cuts on the record but there's a little something extra there. It's hard to pin down and it sounds like a late-nite astrology hotline ad when it's described, but some people have a mix of focus, creativity, and personal charm that makes a session special and sets the results apart. Everything loosens up and gets just right -the third bear's porridge. Charles Stepney, it seems, was one of those people.

So how was I not familiar with Charles Stepney? I went on a deep dive after his name reached me. I immediately took a quick mid-day trip to a couple of record shops and found about a dozen Stepney-produced LPs without even trying. But my surprise was compounded by the fact that much of the deep dive consisted of records I already owned. A cursory scan through my shelves yielded the deepest results: those perfect Terry Callier albums; The Rotary Connection; Minnie Ripperton's debut Come To My Garden; that wild ass Howlin' Wolf album. All drastically different in vibe and intention but all somehow connected to a similar musical language.

Stepney. There he is. I suddenly understood. These aren’t Big Ego records. These aren't recordings with a hierarchy or arrangements made to steal the show -big and boisterous as they sometimes are-and by all accounts Stepney was not a Big Ego guy. Could this music even be made by a Big Ego guy? It's unlikely-and there it is again.

Since the dawn of the American recording industry we’ve been encouraged to visualize The Producer. The Supreme One In Charge: in exchange for their gifts we've been conditioned to allow them a wide berth and to judge them with a grain of salt, never fully weighing them against our supposed concept of a decent human being. Mythical LA Cowboys: unapologetically eccentric, summoning genius from the clouds. A star in their own right. Almost certainly a white man.

Preemptively forgiven with no expiration date: Phil Fucking Spector and the Reverberating American Death Dream. A man's man for fashionable men who can't confront their anger. America wants a James Dean who doesn't cry-legend and lore in real time-and anyone who can't deliver the tabloidian goods when America hits the pellet bar gets their name-recognition cord cut early.

So how does a generous family man from Chicago fit into the ongoing American obsession with celebrity, ego and control? Well, I suppose that's up to us. We have, for years, accepted the fruits of Charles Stepney's brilliance without acknowledging the man. I'm certainly guilty of it. It's a very American thing. I never bothered to learn the name of the workaday father of three who put his whole self into his art and who offered it up for me to have forever.

But I know his name now.

by David Brown