Lee Ritenour -

Lee Ritenour (born Jan. 11, 1952) is an American jazz/pop session guitarist and recording artist from Los Angeles. He launched a prolific solo career with First Course in 1976 and recorded extensively with recurring collaborators Eric Tagg, Dave Grusin, and Harvey Mason before joining Fourplay in the early 1990s. The Tagg-sung “Is It You?” reached the Billboard Top 20, followed by the 1982 hit “Cross My Heart.”

Background

Lee Mack Ritenour was born on Jan. 11, 1952, in Los Angeles, California. His father played piano as an amateur and supported his early interest in music. Ritenour started guitar lessons as a child and studied from about age twelve with Los Angeles guitarist Duke Miller after Barney Kessel recommended the teacher. Ritenour also took individual lessons from Kessel and Joe Pass. He attended the University of Southern California, where he studied classical guitar with Christopher Parkening for two and a half years.

Ritenour played in teenage groups before John Phillips hired him for a studio date at approximately age sixteen. Phillips recorded the session at his Bel Air home studio and subsequently placed Ritenour on a Mamas & Papas track. Ritenour backed Lena Horne and Tony Bennett by age eighteen and entered the Los Angeles studio network through musicians including keyboardist Dave Grusin. He left USC after Sérgio Mendes recruited him for touring work and played on the 1974 Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ’77 album Vintage 74.

Ritenour expanded his session work across jazz and pop projects through 1974 and 1975. He joined Oliver Nelson for the January 1975 Los Angeles sessions that produced Skull Session. Carly Simon used Ritenour on electric guitar and mandolin for Playing Possum. Harvey Mason featured him on Marching in the Street, where Ritenour played guitar on several tracks and wrote “Wild Rice.”

Patrice Rushen employed Ritenour throughout her second Prestige album, Before the Dawn. Ritenour also joined Sonny Criss at ABC Recording Studios for sessions that produced material for the 1976 Impulse! album Warm & Sonny. By 1975, Ritenour worked regularly with the Los Angeles players who also populated his first solo sessions, including Grusin, Rushen and Mason. Ritenour entered the Sound Labs in Hollywood in October 1975 with producer Skip Drinkwater to record First Course for Epic Records.

Discography: