Their Motto Could Be: Just Duet

When Ramsey Lewis joins Billy Taylor on the stage of the Plummer Auditorium on Sunday, the two pianists will celebrate a friendship that goes back some 40 years. They met in a Chicago recording studio in 1956 as Lewis was about to cut his first album.

“We had a mutual friend who brought him by to see me record,” Lewis said by phone recently from Chicago, where he lives. “I idolized him in those days. I mean, I was working in a record shop that sold Billy Taylor records. He was very encouraging. He came in and sat at the piano a little bit and played and had nice things to say. We’ve been friends ever since.”

Touring as a duo came about when Taylor asked Lewis to join him in piano duets on a television special for the Bravo network in the early ‘90s.

“We were supposed to play for a half-hour but ended up taping enough for two or three shows,” Lewis recalled. “So we decided to take the show out on the road.

“We opened with a free concert in Kansas City in a park for 15,000 people. I remember looking out over that crowd, and they were partying and had their barbecues going, and I thought, ‘Is this the right place for two Steinway pianos to play?’ But as soon as we started, they settled down, and then they wouldn’t let us leave.”

Ever since, Lewis, 61, and longtime New York City resident Taylor, 75, have gone out and done a number of performances together each year.

“It’s very meaningful to me when we work together,” Lewis said. “I love to play the piano. I love to hear Billy Taylor play the piano. And I love to play the piano with Billy Taylor.”

Since that first recording session, Lewis has climbed into the public eye with a commercially astute style of sophisticated soul that remains true to its jazz, blues and gospel roots. After a string of releases on the Chess, Cadet and Argo labels, the pianist reached the pop charts in 1965 with “The In Crowd,” followed by “Wade in the Water” and “Hang On Sloopy.” He collaborated with Earth Wind & Fire in the ‘70s and has continued to put out crossover albums, most recently for the GRP label.

But Lewis said he hasn’t always been happy with the efforts.

“So many people know me only from the success of certain records that were singles,” he said. “But there’s a side of me that most people haven’t heard unless they’ve seen me in concert.”

That’s because the way albums are assembled has changed in the last few decades, he said.

Today, he said, record companies “want you to think in terms of singles. They’re always asking, ‘What have you got for radio play to put on your album?’ ”

Lewis is thrilled by his recent shift to the revitalized Impulse record label.

“For once, I’ve got the opportunity to do an album and no one’s going to lean over my shoulder and ask me if there’s a single for radio play in there,” said Lewis. “Impulse is a bit more introspective, more into straight-ahead, classic jazz than GRP.” (Both labels are owned by MCA.)

It follows, then, that Lewis has big plans for his first Impulse album, set to be recorded in the spring.

“I’ve been putting together a 19-piece orchestra with [arranger-composer-bassist] John Clayton, a concert band not unlike what Gil Evans put together for Miles Davis for [the 1960 recording] ‘Sketches of Spain,’ ” Lewis said.

The material for the album is even more unusual: jazz treatment of operatic arias.

Another effort, Lewis’ fusion project, Urban Knights, will release its second album (on GRP) in April. This time the crew joining Lewis includes pianist Gerald Albright, saxophonist Najee, guitarist Jonathan Butler and others.

“The idea is to put the more fun, more commercial stuff on GRP and the more serious music on Impulse,” he said. “I feel blessed that the record companies are allowing me to do both.”

* Ramsey Lewis and Billy Taylor play Sunday at Plummer Auditorium, 201 E. Chapman Ave., Fullerton. 3 p.m. $10-$30. Presented by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County. (714) 553-2422.