Drummer Dennis Chambers may be renowned the world over for his powerful style and extraordinary versatility, but when he began working on Outbreak (ESC), his first American recording as a leader, he decided to eschew flashy solos in favor of just playing grooves. Chambers-whose resume includes stints with John Scofield, Parliament-Funkadelic, Santana and Mike Stern, to name just a few-is joined by several well-known friends, including Scofield, Michael and Randy Brecker, Will Lee, Jim Beard (who also produced the album) and Chambers’ onetime P-Funk bandmate Rodney “Skeet” Curtis. The result is a free-spirited, all-star jam session with Chambers’ potent drumming as its hard-grooving driving force. The title track is a no-holds-barred jam featuring Michael Brecker soloing with abandon, while the funky “Groovus Interruptus” is reminiscent of Funkadelic’s “(Not Just) Knee Deep.” Scofield honors Baltimore-born Chambers with his bouncy tribute “Baltimore, DC,” and the album closes with a cover of James Brown’s “Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothin’.” With this CD, Chambers and Co. are talkin’ loud and sayin’ a lot.
Originally PublishedRelated Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading

Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading

Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro
Kurt Elling: Man in the Air
Nate Chinen makes the argument that Kurt Elling is the most influential jazz vocalist of our time