His startling set of duets with Larry Young in 1977. On the first three, he plays piano, with Larry Young on organ and synthesizer. With a romantic flourish, he does justice to Trane’s After The Rain, alone at the keyboard. Then Young ‘takes over, cranking out hard-driving riffs that owe more to the hard rock of Deep Purple and Atomic Rooster than Jimmy Smith, as Chambers lays down a thundering backbeat full of high-impact tom rolls. Out of print for decades, this wild album’s reemergence is long overdue’ (The Wire).
Check your Bobby Hutcherson Blue Notes from the late-60s — records like Oblique and Spiral — for how Joe Chambers bends them round the wall and into the top corner, with his musicianship and compositions both.
Premier sampled Mind Rain for Nas’ NY State Of Mind (to put you out of your misery).
Very warmly recommended.
CD from Soul Brother.
Surely the definitive reissue of this Detroit jazz classic.
It’s the recording of a live performance in 1970; a deeply entertaining, hard-nosed quick-fire of forward-looking takes on soul jazz, post-bop, modal, and out-there. The great drummer is in pumped, scintillating form; keen to lay out his virtuosic brilliance. Woody Shaw, George Coleman, Hugh Lawson, and Cecil McBee… the band is blazing.
Re-mastered using the original master-tapes; 180g vinyl; Stoughton tip-on sleeves; an insert with new notes and rare photographs.