Customer Reviews

Whims of Chambers

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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Paul Chambers is definitely one of my favorite bass players, so picking up this album was almost essenitial. I was right in thinking that it would be good because it is. Chambers is of course up front, but unlike a lot of bass players solo albums (read Ron Carter), Mr. PC is never in your face. He simply solos more. And there are a bunch of chances on this deal to hear his great arco playing, which always caught my ear.

I disagree though with Amazon's opinion on Donald Byrd. I think he plays quite well. If anyone's lines are not up to par, I would have to say that it's Trane's. But it's the wild card, Kenny Burrell who really does it for me on this album. Philly Joe lights a huge fire under Burrell and his guitar solos really knocked me down on the ground. This is a great session for Burrell.

It is just good though to hear more of Chamber's arco playing. If you want to here some more, you can check out Bud Powell's Scene Changes. PC solos like a mf with the bow on a bunch of songs. And Whims of Chambers is just a good deal to have around. The only drawback is the sound quality isn't too great. Perhaps Bluenote will eventually remaster and release it without all the unnecessary echo. Great album. Get it.

If you are reading this, your interest in Mr. PC has been sparked for some reason. You would be remiss not to buy this album, if not for the great bass playing and composition of Mr PC (Paul Chambers) himself, but also because John Coltrane appears on some of the tunes. Buy this one first, but then check out "We Three" with Paul Chambers.

Just look at the personnel here and know that this side swings from the first to the last note.
Super hip compositions from Trane and Donald Byrd, with a nice little ballad thing and a hip bass melody blues from PC. Philly Joe's intro to Omicron will keep drummers up at night for centuries. I love Donald Byrd on minor tunes and he doesn't disappoint me here. Trane lays out for two measures in one of the tunes as though he is thinking about what to play next. That pause in itself is a rare enough occurrence. When he comes back in he lays down what he had been contemplating and we find it was worth the wait. I dig the silence that preceded it as much as the phrase itself, just because it so rare.
Horace and Kenny do a great job of staying out of each other's way and all pianists and guitarists should be made to listen to how they do so. Far too often the two gang up on the soloist and bury him/her with accompaniment.
My personal favorite on the record is Omicron, a line based on the changes to Dizzy's "Woody'n You". Trane only plays one chorus! It is a very nice, concise chorus, but i have been listening to this record for 25 years wishing he had taken at least two more on these deceptively challenging changes.
Great music.

The most interesting thing about this album is the band. Often overlooked as an important recording, the musicians on this record are all legends in their own rights. To hear what they sounded like at such an early part of their recording careers is extremely gratifying. I highly recommend it.

It was bad enough that none of the tracks from a recent iTunes download was accurately labeled (I thought Apple had lowered their prices, but I was paying $1.29 per track--and for the wrong tracks at that!) But as of this moment the sample tracks Amazon provides for "Whims of Chambers" have nothing to do with Paul, with the genre, or even with quality rock music (which is what they appear to represent). The rock-star vocalist keeps singing "They're singing the same songs." Boy, does he have that right. But again I'll try to set Amazon straight and hope for the better.

Otherwise, this session is one of the staples in the Blue Note stable, featuring the player whose only rival at this time may not have been Mingus or even Pettiford but Scottie LaFaro (who was making records for Contemporary, before his meeting up with Bill), Ray Brown (admittedly, a more muscular sound than Paul's), Curtis Counce (ignored because of his absence on the East Coast scene), and Paul's classmate and relative, also from Detroit, Doug Watkins. It's indeed sobering to consider the brevity of the lives of LaFaro, Watkins, Counce, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Chambers. But while they were here, they built the solid foundations upon which some of the period's most memorable recordings were based. And unlike their successors, beginning in the '60s and extending into the '70s and beyond, they suffered neither from illusions that the bass is primarily a solo rather than a supportive instrument nor from the over-amplified bass frequencies of engineers compensating for hearing loss. All of the aforementioned players are a joy to listen to as much for their walking lines as for their melodic solo work, and as one reviewer has pointed out, Paul Chambers and his contemporaries are never "in your face." They give the listener credit, providing for a musical experience that is free, open, and shared--among the musicians, but equally with the listener. It's players like Paul and Watkins who led a Pastor-friend to confide in me that, rather than be a clergyman, he would have preferred to "serve" as the quintessential supportive bass man, making the entire journey and missing nary a step. They also serve who stand and wait.

Lest the foregoing discourage listeners drawn to this date for, above all, the virtuosity of Chambers, rest assured that it's not lost. Three of the compositions are Paul's, he has solos on virtually all of the tunes, and on one, the mis-titled "Tale of the Fingers," the towering bassist tells some mighty tall tales with his bow (to my ears he's not merely the first but the best when it comes to blowing bass solos out of the Bird playbook with a bow (give the pre-Bird honor to Slam Stewart).

This is an excellent release. I strongly recommend getting the Mosaic Paul Chambers 3CD set released in 2003 instead of getting the single discs... superior sound, informative liner note, good price. If not available here, try Mosaicrecords.com.