Ernest Ranglin: Surfin

Herald rating: * *

Forty years after he helped to create ska on Millie Small's My Boy Lollipop, the legendary guitarist is enjoying the highest profile of his long career.

His blend of reggae riddums and fluid jazz guitar (on previous albums, often with countryman/pianist Monty Alexander) hits that midpoint between inoffensive, classy background music for a dinner party, warm vibes for the backyard barbecue, and smart and inventive improvised pop-jazz.

This time he again pulls some seasoned Jamaican session musicians into the old Tuff Gong Studio and, as the album title suggests, evokes sunny days and balmy tropical nights.

Reminiscing here recalls the memorably cruisy theme to the classic 60s surf movie The Endless Summer. He reconfigures Delroy Wilson's rock-steady Dancing Mood into his style, and tracks with titles such as Surfside (mellow), Tender Moments and Dance All speak for themselves.

There is some terrific stuff - the oddly familiar original and finger-tricky One Chord Stylee - and the arrangements are horns tight and pointed, but too often it all slides together into a warm but unaffecting ambience. You lose interest in where the tunes might be going and you might well be thinking of polite 70s fusion and bores such as the Spirogyra.

Ranglin has made some essential albums, but this toothless pleasantry doesn't sound like one.

Label: Elite