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Lester Chambers was born and raised with his twelve siblings in Lee County Mississippi. His Baptist parents encouraged all thirteen of their children to sing in the local church choir. This early passion for music continued when the family moved to Los Angeles in the early 1950's. Around the time the Beatles left England for America Lester and his brothers ventured into LA's fabled Ash Grove coffee house and began singing their special blend of gospel/folk music. An old guitar, bass and those heavenly voices led by Lester on harmonica and cowbell soon had folks lined up down Melrose in West Hollywood. Eventually leading them to New York City.
Along the way Lester recalls seeing hundreds of colorfully dressed, long haired kids hitchhiking away from their homes. This Hippy exodus inspired his brother Joe to pen the words to Time Has Come Today: Time has come today For young hearts to go their way Can't put it off another day They say we don't listen anyway Time has come today New York was quick to embrace this unique psychedelic, rock 'n' roll, gospel group and Columbia Records scored a huge pop hit with a first ever 11-minute single.
Time Has Come Today, the title track became an anthem of the era. Like their good friends, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Sly and the Family Stone, they were filling arenas with both white and black kids for the first time.
Chambers has reported that despite the group's success, he did not receive any royalty payments from 1967 to 1994. In a chat session on the Soul Patrol website, he discussed such injustices that many black artists have endured.
In 2002 his wife, Lola Chambers, testified before the California Senate hearings on Label Accounting Practices that "Time Has Come Today" earned the group under $250 in royalties for the European market over 16 years. She said that Columbia Records told them that "there were no overseas sales to report because The Chambers Brothers records were never licensed to an overseas distributor". But she later discovered copies on eBay of numerous foreign pressings of their records on Columbia foreign affiliate labels for which they were not compensated. In 2003, the home of Lola and Lester Chambers was broken in to and their record collection, consisting of over sixty Chambers Brothers albums and over one hundred singles, was stolen. Lola Chambers had spent twenty five years collecting Chambers Brothers records at various venues to leave these for their sons. Lester Chambers developed a number of medical problems that went untreated because he lacked insurance.
He later became homeless, sleeping in a rehearsal hall in Novato, California, until Yoko Ono paid to rent a home for him and his son Dylan. In March 2012 Lester started an Internet campaign that went viral to publicize what he claims to be a lack of equitable royalty payments. His Facebook posting received over 2,500 "likes" and over 2,000 "shares" in the first 15 hours on his "Wall"; it was featured on the front page of Reddit and there were hundreds of tweets about the story.
On July 13, 2013 Lester Chambers was reportedly assaulted onstage during a performance at the Russell City Hayward Blues Festival after dedicating a performance of "People Get Ready" to Trayvon Martin, the day the jury found his killer not guilty of a criminal offense. He was reported by his son Dylan to be in "ok" condition later the same evening.
Chambers is a resident of Petaluma, California.