Lee Ritenour

Lee Ritenour acquired the nickname "Captain Fingers" thanks to his rare agility on the guitar. An accomplished jazz artist who moves fluidly across styles, he has built a reputation through contributions to fusion, crossover, post-bop, and Brazilian jazz. A sought-after session player since the 1970s, Ritenour has recorded with an array of leading figures such as George Duke, Barbra Streisand, Stanley Turrentine, Carly Simon, Steely Dan, Quincy Jones, Sonny Rollins, and Dizzy Gillespie. His own projects and collaborations have brought both critical recognition and commercial results, among them a Top 30 Billboard 200 entry with the 1981 release Rit and a Grammy Award for the 1985 album Harlequin, created alongside Dave Grusin and featuring several of Brazil’s foremost musicians. As a founding member of the jazz supergroup Fourplay from 1991 to 1995, Ritenour has also issued multiple Contemporary Jazz Albums that reached the Top Five, including 1993’s Wes Bound, 2015’s A Twist of Rit, and 2020’s Dreamcatcher. Four decades after Harlequin, Ritenour and Grusin assembled another roster of Rio’s premier players to record the 2024 album Brasil.

Born in Los Angeles on January 11, 1952, Ritenour began playing guitar at age eight and resolved to pursue music professionally by the time he turned twelve. His parents backed these goals by securing lessons with leading instructors across Southern California. At fifteen he became part of the rock band the Esquires, and after John Phillips observed him performing, Phillips asked the teenager to contribute to a forthcoming Mamas & the Papas session—marking the sixteen-year-old guitarist’s debut studio date. Although Ritenour’s interests spanned rock and soul, his strongest affinity lay with jazz, where Wes Montgomery served as a primary influence; within several years he appeared on notable engagements with artists such as Lena Horne and Tony Bennett.

Ritenour paused his professional activities to enroll at the University of Southern California, studying classical guitar with Christopher Parkening, yet he resumed working after two-and-a-half years. By the mid-1970s he ranked among Los Angeles’s premier session musicians, appearing on projects by Steely Dan, Pink Floyd, Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Carly Simon, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Natalie Cole, the Bee Gees, and Quincy Jones, in addition to jazz collaborations with Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Alphonso Johnson, and Stanley Turrentine. Ritenour also pursued Brazilian and Latin influences, touring with Sergio Mendes in 1973 and recording alongside Flora Purim, Gato Barbieri, and Paulinho Da Costa.

Ritenour emerged as a featured artist in 1976 with the Epic Records release First Course, a refined jazz-pop album. Following four further Epic titles, he shifted to the Elektra-affiliated Discovery label for the 1978 Grammy-nominated album The Captain’s Journey, the initial entry in a series of seven recordings issued through Elektra and its subsidiaries. In 1985 he partnered with pianist Dave Grusin, singer-songwriter Ivan Lins, and additional top Brazilian session musicians on Harlequin. The project reached number two on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Albums chart and earned a Grammy for Best Arrangement on an Instrumental for the track “Early A.M. Attitude.” Ritenour and Grusin maintained an ongoing partnership, with the majority of Ritenour’s solo catalog appearing on Grusin’s GRP label well into the twenty-first century.

During 1990 Ritenour participated in sessions for Bob James’s Grand Piano Canyon alongside bassist Nathan East and drummer Harvey Mason. The three musicians formed a group after their positive experience together, and Ritenour, James, East, and Mason issued their debut Fourplay album in 1991. That release achieved strong commercial results; Ritenour remained with the ensemble for two additional albums—1993’s Between the Sheets and 1994’s Elixir—before departing, at which point Larry Carlton assumed his role. While sustaining an active solo career and ongoing work with Dave Grusin and Bob James, Ritenour continued extensive session contributions, with estimates placing his total recordings at 3,000, and maintained a global touring schedule.

He switched labels in 2005, issuing Overtime on Concord Records, and followed with the 2010 album Six String Theory, which featured collaborations with a wide array of guitarists including B.B. King, George Benson, Keb’ Mo’, Pat Martino, and others. In 2012 Ritenour delivered another collaborative project, Rhythm Sessions, incorporating guest appearances by Dave Grusin, Stanley Clarke, George Duke, Chick Corea, and Patrice Rushen, plus winners from a 2010 talent competition he had established. He returned in 2015 with A Twist of Rit, presenting both new compositions and reinterpretations of material from his 1975 debut First Course and the 1981 album Rit; the release topped Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz Albums chart. Dreamcatcher, his inaugural solo guitar album, appeared in December 2020 and reached number five on the Contemporary Jazz Albums chart.

In 2023, nearly forty years after the Grammy-winning Harlequin, Ritenour and Grusin reconvened an accomplished ensemble of Brazilian musicians and vocalists in Los Angeles, among them Celso Fonseca, Chico Pinheiro, Ivan Lins, and Tatiana Parra, with Swiss harmonica virtuoso Gregoire Maret serving as featured soloist. Released on Candid in May 2024, the resulting album bears the title Brasil.