Bad Company 2002

Best remembered for the late-'70s chart-topper "Baby Come Back," Player were formed in Los Angeles in 1977 by singer/guitarist Peter Beckett (formerly of the U.K. group Skyband), bassist Ronn Moss, and guitarist/keyboardist J.C. Crowley. After adding drummer John Friesen, Player signed to impresario Robert Stigwood's RSO label and issued "Baby Come Back," which sat atop the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks in early 1978. Their self-titled debut LP appeared that same year, as did the follow-up, Danger Zone. Crowley exited Player soon after and enjoyed a solo career as a country artist; the remaining trio issued Room with a View in 1980 before Moss and Friesen both departed as well.

This volume in the Chronological Classics Ben Webster series is a fascinating slice during a wildly transitional period for the saxophonist. In the years between 1946-1951, Webster made numerous jumps as evidenced by these tracks, from the glorious jumping big swing of "The Jeep Is Jumpin'" while he was with Bill De Arango to the searing bebop of "Dark Corners" (with some blazing guitar work by De Arango) to the small-combo hard bop of "Randle's Island" to the bluesy, near soul-jazz balladry of "You're My Thrill." In Webster's company are some masters to be sure, including Maynard Ferguson, Al Haig, Big Sid Catlett, Bill Coleman, Benny Carter, Tony Scott, Buster Moten, and Gerald Wiggins, to name a few. This is varied set in terms of style, but these performances (and sound) are consistently fine.

Terje Rypdal was born in Oslo in 1947 and has made a considerable name for himself as one of Europe’s leading jazz guitarists. In recent decades he has taken to composing serious concert works and these two large-scale Sonata structures, lasting 29 and 24 minutes in duration respectively, were both written for the violinist Birgitte Staernes, an outstanding artist who specialises in modern music. There is much to fascinate the listener in these scores, not least in their coloration and texture; where they tend to part company with established points of reference is in their melodic and structural characteristics, not that these are necessarily bad things in themselves, providing that the composer is sufficiently inventive to hold our interest.