Gettin' To It (1995)

It seems the strategy here was to surround the 22-year-old bassist (making his debut as a leader on Gettin' To It) with as many glamorous young names as possible: Joshua Redman, Roy Hargrove, Cyrus Chestnut. Christian McBride has a big, fat tone and limitless dexterity, and the music boils (especially a choice piece of funk called ''In a Hurry''), but everything feels a little antiseptic — this isn't, after all, a working band, just a one-shot convocation of hired guns. B