Chambers' Music - Paul Chambers

Chambers' Music is one of bassist Paul Chambers's early leader dates, recorded on March 2, 1956 at Rudy Van Gelder's studio and released on Jazz: West. The quartet features John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Kenny Drew on piano, and Philly Joe Jones on drums. The six-track program mixes originals with Benny Golson's "Stablemates" and Cole Porter's "Easy to Love." The album captures Coltrane before his landmark recordings with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk — his playing here is already harmonically dense but more contained than the searching style he would develop over the next few years. Drew's piano comping is crisp and bebop-rooted, and Jones drives the session with the fiery precision that made him the preferred drummer for both Davis and Coltrane during this period. Chambers, just twenty years old at the time of the recording, plays with the melodic sensibility and rhythmic authority that would make him the most in-demand bassist of his generation. His arco solos demonstrate the singing tone and intonation that distinguished him from his contemporaries. The album is a valuable early document of two musicians — Chambers and Coltrane — who were about to become central figures in jazz, recorded before either had achieved the fame that their work with Davis would bring.