I always enjoyed his solo on "It's a Blue World" (the album shares that title) with Red Garland. In general PC's style is not really my thing, but I have been able to appreciate some recordings of him.
LYON-EL - you gotta get some of the Red Garland Trio recordings. A personal favorite is GROOVY, very swinging and PC plays some nice **** on there. Also the intro, meldoy and solo on YOU'D BE SO NICE TO COME HOME TO off BASS ON TOP. Only a couple of solos, but MOTOR CITY SESSION has some nice PC playing on it.
Yeah, I haven't heard all of what Ed is referencing, but PC's playing with Red Garland is definitely among his finest.
Kind of a nothing blues, but I love the interchange between him and Kenny Dorham on that. Not tops of my list as a solo on it's own, but it's a great primer in ensemble playing. Of course, because it is a Prestige record, the piano is out of tune a bit. Troy
Some of my favorites are "Pfrancing" from Someday My Prince Will Come,"Moment's Notice" from Blue Train, and "Straight, No Chaser" from Milestones, among many, many others. Swinging!
I like his solos on 'Visitation' from Chambers Music and 'You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To' from Bass on Top. Anyone ever notice how much the tempo drops by the end of the tune on You'd Be So Nice? I wonder what happened.
Check out the record "1st Bassman" under his name if you haven't before. I've just come into it and it's really solid. It features him much more than "Whims of Chambers" does. He plays most of the heads with 3 horns playing counter melody to him. He solo'ed A LOT on this CD in addition. good stuff.
How about his solo on c Jam blues with Red? I approached the cut to figure it out what Red was doing but became equally wrapped up on PC's melodic solo as well as just his opening walking line on the head. He does a bit of traveling there in the beginning in constructing the length of the walking line and your might not even notice it.
There are tons of great PC soli. So many we could drink and argue all night about the best ones. Advice please...I transcribed a couple great ones from Bass on Top (You'd Be So Nice and Dear Old Stockholm) that I could post but I don't know the best format. I have them in clean, compact adobe files but pdf is not on the list of permissible upload formats. I can save to png (very compact) but don't know if y'all can read that format. Jpeg files are larger than the 150K limit. Adobe also saves to postscript. Any ideas? EE
If you use a free photo upload website (like www.photobucket.com), you can then use the image link they provide to post on this site.
OK, here is a resized jpeg of the outgoing improv on "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To" from Chambers' Bass On Top. Changes are stock and don't necessarily match the recording. Any notes on errors or disagreements are welcome. You can import the jpeg into a word processor and resize it for printing to regular paper. Resolution isn't great but it can be read. I've also done the ingoing improv on this tune (4 pages) and Dear Old Stockholm (another fav of mine) from this recording if anyone is interested. Enjoy, EE Thanks to Ed for the picture site. I'm checking into it.
+1 on that - Everyone should at least have "A Garland of Red," Red Garland's Piano" and "Groovy" in their collection. I recently managed to get a copy of Sonny Clark's "Sonny Clarke Trio" and there's some nice stuff on there. I prefer PCs work with the trios, not the least because you can hear him better, but he does seem to step it up a notch with them (pun intended ). And there's usually a tasty arco solo, or two or three, on the CDs too.