James Dean is often mentioned in discussions about Chet Baker, the jazz trumpet star of the mid-Fifties, but the Golden Boy photographs on the latter's early albums always made me think of Paul Hornung. Which makes the cover portraits on You Can't Go Home Again all the more shocking since they're graphic and unavoidable reminders of Baker's long struggle to overcome heroin addiction. Happily, on the record, Baker seems much healthier; if anything, he sounds almost too together—everything is very circumscribed, from the melodic sweep (long stretches are built on two-note riffs) to the dynamic range. Within the limits of his style, however, Baker's horn is bitter sweetly convincing.

But, as is the case with many current jazz LPs, the featured soloist is just one player among many and not necessarily the leader or even the shaping personality. Here, producer/arranger Don Sebesky usurps the role and employs a somewhat deadly sameness of approach to all but the title track: quasi-rock rhythms for the main melody, a straight-time "elegant" bridge, then solos on a one-chord vamp. This predictable strategy succeeds only on "Love for Sale," where tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker and guitarist John Scofield show some imagination and the electric/acoustic bass duet by Alphonso Johnson and Ron Carter is carried off with spunk. Tony Williams is mostly confined to drum patterns.

Sebesky's "You Can't Go Home Again," the ballad contrast, is alto saxophonist Paul Desmond's last recording. Desmond, who died of lung cancer soon after, sounds like a man with no strength left. (RS 260)

BOB BLUMENTHAL