Jimmy Jam (1959- ) & Terry Lewis (1956- )
Inducted 2016
James “Jimmy Jam” Harris III and Terry Lewis, songwriters, musicians, and record producers, met while attending high school in Minneapolis. However, they did not meet in class, but while attending a TRIO Upward Bound program on The University of Minnesota Campus. Jimmy Jam plays keyboards, piano, synthesizers, and drum machine. Terry Lewis plays guitar and percussion. In the mid-1970s Jimmy & Terry formed a band called Flyte Tyme which evolved into 1980s international funk favorites The Time. Along with Prince, Jimmy & Terry created “The Minneapolis Sound”, a modernized take on rhythm & blues- funk- soul- black music using synthesizers replacing traditional horns and their arrangements. This sound was the blueprint for all worldwide popular music in the 1980s. The duo formed a recording studio and production company in South Minneapolis entitled Flyte Tyme in the mid-’80s named after their old band. It has been estimated that Flyte Tyme’s recordings have sold over 200 million records worldwide. Around this time Jimmy & Terry also formed Perspective Records, funded and distributed by major label A&M Records. The duo have worked with Prince, Sounds of Blackness, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Human League, SOS Band, Usher and many more. The sound that Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis created in the 1980s could still be heard by 2010s hitmaker Bruno Mars’ hit “Uptown Funk”, which was a direct homage to “The Minneapolis Sound”. So far-reaching is the imprint of their work, a “revival” of Jimmy & Terry’s sound is taking place in the nightclubs of New Orleans during the 2020s.
