Not enough attention is paid these days to Chambers, doubtless because he was so ubiquitous and so straightahead. The innovations of Mingus and the LaFaro generation didn’t affect him, and his bowed work (which, interestingly, Miles never featured) didn’t leave a lasting legacy. But his walking lines and pizzicato solos were state-ofthe-art for the second half of the 1950s. The first three sessions, done for Blue Note within the space of a year, show exactly what was so impressive and they have the benefit of excellent rhythm-section companions. Two of them have Donald Byrd on top form, and the first also has three tracks with the early, uneven Coltrane (who wrote two of the tunes), but the closing album Go! has the added enjoyment of Adderley and the young Hubbard. Would Chambers have sounded quite so great without the prominence given him by Rudy Van Gelder? That closing set done in Chicago for Vee-Jay has him (as on many of the Miles Columbia albums) less sharply reproduced, yet the actual music is undiminished. Incidentally, tune-titles for the opening Whims Of Chambers session have been garbled in the running-order, but the minuscule print of the original liner-notes should straighten you out.