STANLEY CLARKE: I WANNA PLAY FOR YOU [UK 1979] LPX2/GAT EN GIRONA

STANLEY CLARKE: I WANNA PLAY FOR YOU [UK 1979] LPx2/GAT STANLEY CLARKE: I WANNA PLAY FOR YOU [UK 1979] LPx2/GAT (Epic - CBS)  1979  made in UK cat. num.  EPC 22133 #jazz rock  #jazz funk  #fusion   A1 Rock 'N' Roll Jelly 2:35 A2 All About 5:15 A3 Jamaican Boy 3:27 A4 Christopher Ivanhoe 3:22 A5 My Greatest Hits 6:28 B1 Strange Weather 1:45 B2 I Wanna Play For You 6:20 B3 Just A Feeling 6:02 B4 The Streets Of Philadelphia 5:55 C1 School Days 10:43 C2 Quiet Afternoon 9:00 D1 Together Again 5:40 D2 Blues For Mingus 2:18 D3 Off The Planet 3:10 D4 Hot Fun-Closing 7:50   Stanley Clarke  stretches his muscles and comes up with a mostly impressive, polystylistic, star-studded double album (now on one CD) that gravitates ever closer to the R&B mainstream.  Clarke 's writing remains strong and his tastes remain unpredictable, veering into rock, electronic music, acoustic jazz, even reggae in tandem with British rocker  Jeff Beck.  Clarke 's excursion into disco, "Just a Feeling," is surprisingly and infectiously successful, thanks to a good bridge and  George Duke 's galvanizingly funky work on the Yamaha electric grand piano (his finest moment with  Clarke  by far). The brief "Blues for Mingus," a wry salute from one master bassist to another (Mingus  died about six months before this album's release), is a cool acoustic breather for piano trio, and the eloquent  Stan Getz  can be detected, though nearly buried under the garish vocals and rock-style mix, on "The Streets of Philadelphia." Yet even the talented  Clarke  in full creative flower couldn't quite fill a double set with new material, so he has a tendency to reprise some of his old memorable riffs a lot, and there are several energetic snapshots of his live band in action. In its zeal to get this two-LP set onto one disc, Epic deleted three of the original 15 tracks -- including at least one gem, the sizzling hard rocker "All About" -- and scrambled the order of the remaining tunes. Which is dumb, because the missing tracks only take up a bit less than 12 minutes of playing time, not enough to overload a 65-minute disc. Hunt for the double-LP version if you can still play vinyl.