Ray Parker Jr.

In 1984, Ray Parker Jr. went from a successful but relatively obscure session musician (playing with Stevie Wonder, Barry White, the Spinners, etc.) to chart-topping mega-star, thanks to his supernatural party anthem "Ghostbusters." That track kicks off this hits collection, which also features Raydio-era favorites "Jack and Jill" and "You Can't Change That."

Parker is that ever rarer prize, an inspired journeyman. His music is eloquently unobtrusive, and while he doesn't talk his songs, he has no need for vocal pyrotechnics he couldn't muster--his stylishly textured conversational timbre, halfway between a murmur and a purr when he's turning it on, is a cunning interpretive device. In a subgenre whose practitioners hone their sexual personas as sharp as Cole Porter rhyme schemes, he can't be said to have come up with something new--the secure, sincere superstud is a role Teddy Pendergrass exploited less cleverly for years. So this collection is just the thing for those benighted who can't believe they need more than one piece of long-playing ass-man jive. Well, actually they don't--necessity has nothing to do with it. (Grade - A-)