The Lewis Connection
The Lewis Conection (sic)
Numero Group
3 out of 5 stars
Their spelling may have sucked and their sound wasn’t the best, but their vision was far beyond anything that they could have imagined.
In 1978, with a stack of cash from an insurance settlement following a car accident, brothers Andre and Pierre Lewis went on a recording spree through the Twin Cities, cutting a half dozen songs in as many studios. Combining the funk of Parliament with the party soundtrack of Earth, Wind & Fire, the Lewis Connection’s misspelled debut captures the Minneapolis Sound’s founding fathers — Prince among them — at the paradigm-shifting confluence of funk, jazz, and pop for which the Land of 10,000 Lakes is famed.
The reissue is fairly lo-fi to say the least — Numero Group prides itself on pulling out forgotten titles and re-issuing them without the fanfare of re-mastering — and some of the songs frankly suck. But contained in the rubbery basslines is a flow and feel that laid the groundwork for the funk artists that came after, and it is in there that the dusty old title has massive street cred. — BFJ
