You can walk a B-flat blues. Then you put on Kind of Blue, go to “Freddie Freeloader,” and hear Paul Chambers playing mostly eighth notes and triplets through the first four bars, and somehow it feels natural. If you’ve been looking up Paul Chambers bass lines to figure out what he’s doing, here’s the short version, plus my lessons and transcriptions on him.
Quick answer
He was thinking about playing melodies and phrases all of the time, not just the changes. Most of the time his bass lines are bebop licks in slow motion: speed one up and you get a Paul Chambers solo. He used wrong notes as passing tones, just like you do in bebop, and his two-feel lets the notes breathe and speak for themselves.
Paul Chambers, to me, is the foundation of really learning to solo on the upright bass. He took most of his language from Charlie Parker and translated it to the bass. His bass lines, his solos and his two-feel all revolve around each other. It’s all one thing.
What happens when you speed up a Paul Chambers bass line?
You get a Paul Chambers solo. When he played his bass lines, he wasn’t just thinking about bass line licks or about outlining the changes. He was thinking about playing melodies and phrases all of the time, and that’s what makes him one of the greatest bass players to ever live. It works the other way too. When I took one of his solo licks and turned it into a bass line, it worked as a bass line. I had to adapt it a little, but it’s more or less the same exact language.
Take the bridge of Miles Davis’s “Bye Bye Blackbird.” It opens on an F chord, and he doesn’t play one F. Play his line twice as fast and you get a bebop lick. Paul Chambers’s bass lines, most of the time, are bebop licks in slow motion, and that’s why they work so well. I go through that bridge in the Bye Bye Blackbird bass line.
How does Paul Chambers use wrong notes?
Then there are his wrong notes. In his walking on “So What” from Kind of Blue, there are three glaring wrong notes in the first four bars. He used them as passing tones, just like you do in bebop. People love wrong notes way more than you think, and Paul Chambers proved that.
Wrong notes are what make the right notes sound good.
Cole Davis
He also creates chords that aren’t there. On a live “So What,” in the second bar of his walking, he plays an imaginary five, an A7 that isn’t on the chord chart, because he needs to play a bass line that’s interesting. In bar six he starts on a C-sharp. I walk through it in how to play the So What bass line. And “Freddie Freeloader” might be the busiest, most extreme B-flat blues bass line I’ve ever heard. It always moves forward, which is the most important thing with any bass line. That one’s in what Paul Chambers plays on Freddie Freeloader.
You can borrow his dissonance in a single bar. One of my walking drills, one, flat two, two, three, comes from Paul Chambers, who brought dissonance to bass lines. Start a blues with it and you’ll surprise the band, but in the way they want to be surprised. If walking itself still feels new, start with my guide to walking bass lines.
What made Paul Chambers’s two-feel so good?
Everyone talks about his solos and his bass lines. Not enough people talk about his two-feel. He’s one of the great masters of the two-beat. When we play a two-feel, we almost always do something extra between the notes, and I don’t think there’s one recording where he does that. It’s classic Paul Chambers: no embellishments, just letting the notes breathe and speak for themselves. On “Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise,” the first four bars have no extra notes at all. It’s a pure two-feel bass line.
He’s also highlighting beat four, the most important beat in the two-feel. Highlighting it gives you the momentum to get to the next phrase, almost like a very subtle rhythmic tension and release. Listen for it on “Bye Bye Blackbird” from Live at the Blackhawk. The big four is beat four at the end of a four-bar phrase, and that band, with Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb, loved it.
How do you make Paul Chambers’s language your own?
It’s not enough to just play the licks. Anybody who can sight read can play them. To really get them in your playing, mutate them and use them as a framework for your own language. If I take a few notes from a Paul Chambers phrase and change them, it’s still going to be great, because it comes from a great source. Try this today:
- Pick one phrase. Take a Paul Chambers lick you know, or just its first bar.
- Change the last note. Play it, swap the last note for another one, and play it again.
- Keep mutating. Change one note at a time, then change the beginning of the phrase.
- Check the shape. Ask the three questions of a melodic phrase: does it have a beginning, does it go somewhere, does it have an end? Melodic means memorable.
When you’re ready for a whole solo, start with “Dexterity,” my favorite bass solo of all time. It’s what I recommend to my students to transcribe to really get into Paul Chambers. I spent a full two months on it when I was at Juilliard.
Records to start with
- Kind of Blue (Miles Davis). The bass melody and the wrong notes on “So What,” and the triplets on “Freddie Freeloader.”
- Miles Davis, “Bye Bye Blackbird.” Bebop in slow motion on the bridge. For his two-feel on the tune, listen to the Live at the Blackhawk recording.
- Chambers’ Music. “Dexterity,” the solo I spent two months on.
- Whims of Chambers. A long, chromatic phrase through bars two to five of a blues.
- Sonny Clark Trio. “Tad’s Delight,” with Philly Joe Jones, probably his most formidable time partner.
- Bill Evans, “You and the Night and the Music.” Two bars of C minor 7 with an imaginary five in the second bar.
Paul Chambers lessons and transcriptions
- Bebop for Bass: The Paul Chambers Approach. The course on soloing with his language: twelve of his licks, broken down note by note.
- Ultimate Paul Chambers: Solos, 2-Feel and So What. His solos as bass lines and back, his two-feel, a rhythm changes and the wrong notes on “So What.”
- Paul Chambers: Freddie Freeloader. The busiest B-flat blues line on Kind of Blue, transcribed.
- Paul Chambers: So What. Five fingerings for the “So What” line, including the one you can hear him using on the record.
- Paul Chambers: Walking Modal Jazz on So What. The imaginary fives and the C-sharp, from a live “So What.”
- Paul Chambers: Bye Bye Blackbird, Bebop in Slow Motion. The bridge where he walks over an F chord without a single F.
- Paul Chambers: Bye Bye Blackbird, Three Fixes for Your 2-Feel. The big four, clean notes and the right note length for the style.
- Paul Chambers: Bye Bye Blackbird, the Walking Line. His walking on the bridge of the tune.
- Paul Chambers: Bye Bye Blackbird, the Funky 2-Feel. His two-beat on the same tune.
- Paul Chambers: Dexterity in Thumb Position. His solo on “Dexterity,” played up in thumb position.
Pick one record from that list, take a phrase you love, and start changing its notes. You’ll arrive at lines that sound a little like Paul Chambers and even more like you.
Go deeper
Bebop for Bass: The Paul Chambers Approach
Twelve Paul Chambers licks, broken down note by note, for upright players who want their solos to sound like jazz.
FAQ
Who did Paul Chambers get his language from?
From Charlie Parker. He took most of his language from Bird and translated it to the bass. Charlie Parker’s language doesn’t really work on the bass, because he played alto saxophone. What does work on the bass is the language of Paul Chambers, which is a direct line from the language of Charlie Parker.
Which Paul Chambers solo should you transcribe?
“Dexterity,” my favorite bass solo of all time. It’s what I recommend to my students to transcribe to really get into Paul Chambers, and I spent a full two months on it when I was at Juilliard. The lick I teach from that solo is really harmonically dense, and he exploits the sharp 11, which I love. He does that a lot over dominant chords.
Is it OK to play wrong notes like Paul Chambers?
Yes. Use them the way he did, as passing tones, just like you do in bebop. On “So What” there are three glaring wrong notes in the first four bars of his walking, and they make the line sound different and special. As a general rule, avoid wrong notes on beats one and three and use them on beats two and four. Paul Chambers did put them on one and three from time to time.
How is Paul Chambers different from Ray Brown?
Paul Chambers played mostly chromatically, and he didn’t really play in concrete, perfect two-bar phrases. His playing was more flowy, more stream of consciousness. Ray Brown played in two-bar phrases, with a cadence every two bars. Chambers’s chromatic lines stay interesting because he’s changing the register. The most important thing is to have variety.
What is Paul Chambers’s two-feel like?
He’s one of the great masters of the two-beat. When we play a two-feel, we almost always do something extra between the notes, and I don’t think there’s one recording where he does that. He lets the notes breathe and speak for themselves, and he highlights beat four, the most important beat in the two-feel. He often does it in both the second and the fourth bar of a phrase.
