If you learned to walk by putting the root on beat one, listen to Paul Chambers on the bridge of Miles Davis’s “Bye Bye Blackbird.” The bridge opens on an F chord, and he doesn’t play one F. How crazy is that?
Quick answer
On the bridge, Paul Chambers isn’t really focused on playing the root on beat one. The bridge opens on an F chord, and he doesn’t play one F. He starts on the third and plays bebop in F major, just in slow motion. In his two-feel on the Live at the Blackhawk recording, he keeps the first four bars simple and accents the big four.
That Bye Bye Blackbird bass line is totally out and totally genius, and once you see how he does it, you can use the idea in your own lines. I’ll break down his walking on the bridge first, then his two-feel, because Chambers was also one of the great masters of the two-beat.
What does Paul Chambers play instead of roots on the Bye Bye Blackbird bridge?
He’s not really focused on playing the root on beat one. He’s focused on creating shape. Paul Chambers’s bass lines are full of shape, and that’s why he loved chromaticism so much. With chromaticism he could create shape and contour and movement. Look at the arc of this line like it’s a sine wave. It’s constantly moving, but it doesn’t sound like he’s forcing the movement. Everything flows, and everything is voice leading perfectly.
Over the F chord, he starts on the third, A. Then he plays the natural four, which is something you do a lot in bebop. Then he walks up to E, the major seven, and uses some tension to resolve to the A minor 7 flat 5.
Some of his choices are pretty abstract. In the second bar, where some people play a minor 7 flat 5, he plays an E on beat one. You might clash if you do that on a gig. It’s kind of a don’t-try-this-at-home thing. On the G minor 7 he plays the nine on beat one, down low, and his notes are A, D, E and F-sharp. People don’t realize how abstract Paul Chambers’s playing really was.
Speed it up and you get a solo
Here’s what’s really fascinating about this bass line. Play it twice as fast and you get a bebop lick. Even though he’s not playing an F, he’s playing bebop in F major, just in slow motion. You check out the bass players before him, and they weren’t playing this way. He took bebop and applied it to the bass, not just in his solos but in his bass lines.
Paul Chambers’s bass lines most of the time are actually bebop licks in slow motion, and that’s why they work so well.
Cole Davis
On the A minor 7 flat 5, he plays a bebop lick and resolves to the D7. That doesn’t sound like a bass line. It sounds like what goes on top of the bass line. He’s playing Charlie Parker’s language in his walking, and he plays these walking bass lines and solos as one continuous thing. You slow down the solos, you get the bass lines. You speed up the bass lines, you get the solos.
If you listen to that band, it’s a lot of simple ideas. Miles was famous for laying out. He came up playing bebop, but he later left all those notes out, so the bebop is actually in the bass line. Red Garland played very simply, and so did Philly Joe Jones. Coltrane was working stuff out, but even in this era he was still playing simply. Paul Chambers was basically every part of the band. If you follow basketball at all, I liken him to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He was everything.
Compare him with Ray Brown. With Ray Brown, you know that cadence is going to happen: two bars, cadence, another two bars, cadence. Chambers doesn’t really organize his lines in two-bar phrases. His bass lines are one long flowing idea. Sometimes the cadence happens, and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s why Miles loved him. It gave the whole band freedom. You can hear how busy he gets on a blues in what Paul Chambers plays on Freddie Freeloader.
How do you feel the big four in a Bye Bye Blackbird two-feel?
Now put on “Bye Bye Blackbird” from the Live at the Blackhawk recording, with Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb, and try to feel the big four. The big four is beat four at the end of a four-bar phrase. In the first four bars, Chambers keeps it simple, just one, three, one, three, but he’s really accenting beat four.
The big four creates movement and momentum into the next phrase, and movement is the most important thing in any bass line, whether it’s a two-feel, walking or synth bass. When I played the tune in the lesson, I put a lean on beat four at the end of every four-bar phrase. That was exaggerated just to prove my point, but it’s actually the most important thing in the two-feel.
A common problem in a two-feel is all these little extra things in between each note. They distract from the two-feel. I understand why bass players do this. We feel responsible for the time, and we are. But being responsible for the time doesn’t mean you have to play everyone else’s parts. It means you have to own your part. I was doing this until I was 23 or 24 and in graduate school, when I finally had a teacher pull me aside.
Then there’s the length of your notes. On that Blackhawk recording the two-feel is a little longer than what you’d hear in earlier jazz. The ride cymbal is leading, and the bass notes are ringing instead of imitating a tuba. Chambers is playing long notes, but it has the feeling of short notes. On an earlier jazz gig you’d play shorter, so know the style you’re in.
After those first four bars, in the next four, he starts dressing up the two-feel, and it’s funky. In bar six he plays a rhythm I love: two dotted quarters and a quarter, one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two. That comes straight from tuba parts. He plays on the ands and accents them. And in bars 11 and 12 he plays one, then a dotted quarter on three, then hits the and of four and ties it over. That works every time, and it’s so simple. If you can walk a bass line, you can do this.
Try this on Bye Bye Blackbird
- Clean two-feel. Play one and three without a bunch of little extra things in between, and let the notes ring.
- Lean on the big four. At the end of every four-bar phrase, put a lean on beat four.
- Change the rhythm. Drop in two dotted quarters and a quarter, then the rhythm from bars 11 and 12: one, a dotted quarter on three, and the and of four tied over.
- Slow down a lick. Take a bebop line you’d play in a solo and play it as quarter notes over the bridge. You can take the language you learned and slow it down to make a bass line.
For a written line to practice with, there’s a free Bye Bye Blackbird walking bass line with notation and tab on the main site. My lesson on Paul Chambers’s funky 2-feel on Bye Bye Blackbird comes with the PDF, so you can see exactly what he’s doing. If walking itself still feels shaky, start with my guide to walking bass lines.
Put on the Blackhawk “Bye Bye Blackbird” tonight and just listen for the big four. It shows up everywhere.
Go deeper
Paul Chambers: Bye Bye Blackbird, the Funky 2-Feel
Paul Chambers’s two-feel on Bye Bye Blackbird, transcribed so you can play it.
FAQ
Who plays bass on Miles Davis’s Bye Bye Blackbird?
Paul Chambers. In the band I talk about for the walking bridge, Red Garland and Philly Joe Jones played very simply and Coltrane was still playing simply too, while Chambers was basically every part of the band. His two-feel on the tune is on the Live at the Blackhawk recording, from the Miles band with Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb.
Does Paul Chambers play the root on beat one on Bye Bye Blackbird?
On the bridge, he’s not really focused on playing the root on beat one. He’s focused on creating shape. Over the F chord he doesn’t play one F. He starts on the third, A, plays the natural four, walks up to the major seven and uses some tension to resolve to the A minor 7 flat 5.
What’s the big four in a two-feel?
It’s beat four at the end of a four-bar phrase. Paul Chambers and the great masters of the two-feel are always outlining it. You might not hear it right away, but you always feel it. It creates movement and momentum into the next phrase, and if you listen to New Orleans music, the big four is the most important beat.
How do you make a two-feel more interesting?
Start clean: one and three with some variation, not a bunch of little extra things in between. Then change the rhythm. Paul Chambers plays two dotted quarters and a quarter, plays on the ands and accents them, and plays one, then a dotted quarter on three, then the and of four tied over. There’s so much more variety in a two-feel than we think, and tuba parts are more interesting than the two-feel we always think of.
Are Paul Chambers’s bass lines really bebop solos?
Most of the time they’re bebop licks in slow motion. When you speed up his Bye Bye Blackbird bridge line, you get a Paul Chambers solo. He’s playing Charlie Parker’s language in his walking. You slow down the solos, you get the bass lines. You speed up the bass lines, you get the solos.
