Detroit-born Rodney Whitaker, 46, is still one of our music's most respected bassists. After working with the underappreciated Terence Blanchard-Donald Harrison group, he – along with Antonio Hart and drummer Gregory Hutchinson – were among the young lions of the early 1990s in Roy Hargrove's Quintet. They appeared in London a lot and this writer remembers spending time with Antonio Hart, whose first big gig this was. In those days, he counted his lucky stars when he managed to get from A to B in his solos. Twenty years on, he has become one of the jazz world's most fluent saxophonists, with a striking tone and, on soprano, an astonishing purity of sound that, on Whitaker's pretty ballad ‘Jamerson's Lullaby’, could easily be mistaken for the human voice (long notes, beautifully played.) Bruce Barth, who ironically started out in Blanchard's Quartet, is always worth hearing and is in top form harmonically and rhythmically, with a particularly arresting solo on the title track and the gospel-hued ‘Lost in You Again’. Relaxed swing is the thing on this easy-paced straightahead album, with Hutchinson's tasteful crisp fills perfectly complementing everything. Five of the tracks feature the equally pure voice of Rodney's young daughter Rockelle Fortin, who gives ‘Autumn Leaves’ in particular an innocent freshness. No new groundbreaker, but very good of its genre.