Second coming

"You've got to be able to make some melody," he says over the phone from his record company's New York office, "or something -- whether it's rhythmic, harmonic, melodic -- just to have something there that people can grab on to."

Despite the nod to JB, Gettin' to It overall had a '50s hard-bop feel. McBride's retro-originals alternated with chestnuts like "Stars Fell on Alabama," "Night Train," "Too Close for Comfort," and Neil Hefti's Basie-era "Splanky." On the new Number Two Express (also Verve), McBride updates -- slightly. The covers are by Freddie Hubbard ("Little Sunflower"), Ornette Coleman ("Jayne"), Wayne Shorter ("Miyako"), and Chick Corea ("Tones for Joan's Bones"). Those tunes span the decades, but the overall mood is the '70s. Miles Davis's '70s.

What pegs the time frame are the personnel and the instrumentation. That relic of jazz-rock fusion, the Fender Rhodes electric piano, makes it onto a couple of tracks. McBride himself plays electric bass for the first time on one of his albums, with some bel canto fretless electric string bending. Not only does Corea play guest pianist (McBride's working quartet sits this album out), but a couple of other crucial members of the early electric Miles era pay a visit: alto-saxophonist Gary Bartz and drummer Jack DeJohnette. Later Milesians Kenny Garrett (alto) and Minu Cinelu (percussion) also visit.

That makes the disc familiar, but it's not formula. On McBride originals like "Whirling Dervish," "Youthful Bliss," "EGAD," and "Divergence," the pace is hectic and the textures are incendiary. Both Bartz and Garrett build ferocious solos with tart tones and muscular attacks. They like to riff against themselves in different registers, body-slamming DeJohnette's beats, exploding into rude high-note cries. On "Divergence," Corea's minor chords on Fender Rhodes re-create the early electric Miles ensemble sound, but the fever-dream atmosphere belongs as much to McBride's tune and the musicians' spontaneous interactions.

Neither is the instrumentation predictable. Steve Nelson's pointed vibes flavor a few tracks, and a fire breather like "EGAD" is followed by McBride's bowed-bass duet with pianist Kenny Barron. The multi-tracked acoustic and electric basses on "Little Sunflower," dancing in counterpoint to the pattering of Cinelu's percussion, create the lilting choral effect of one of Steve Turre's string-and-conch-shell ensembles.

The desire to entertain -- on a very high level -- drives both albums. Without showboating, McBride always aims for what he calls "coherence." His music repays re-listening -- the rhythmic motifs that inform his solos, the nonstop sense of melody, the personal sense of swing that creates paths the ear can follow.

Not that he always guesses right with his own tunes. "When I put my first album out, I thought everyone was going to be paying attention to the title track. `Gettin' to It' came from James Brown, so I figured that was obvious. But the more I talked to people about the album, the more I found that they liked `The Shade of the Cedar Tree,' which was inspired by Cedar Walton. I was pretty surprised by that. It was really straight-ahead, lots of blowing, right down the pike."

McBride's also unafraid to switch gears into electric territory on the new album. "I thought that only the acoustic purists would be turned off by it. But I realize at this point that I have to make sure I'm happy before anybody else with my music. I think the artist should be happy and believe in their music long before anybody else."

He sees his next step as a big-band project, one that would draw on the '60s large ensemble work by Quincy Jones and Oliver Nelson. "Like Duke Ellington, they're so modern. They don't just stick to the traditional big-band voicings and techniques. Oliver Nelson would go as far as English horns and oboes and all kinds of things. He was so diverse, he could go with any style any time. As a musician, that's what I strive for."

And does he worry about being nailed for unoriginality? "I don't worry about that, because I've figured it out: even if you think you're doing something new, someone's going to tell you that it's not. I don't worry about it sounding or not sounding like somebody else. I just go for it. Anyone who's listened to the new record can tell that I'm not Dave Holland."