Consumer Guide Album

Joe Jackson: Body and Soul [A&M, 1984]
Jackson's done it again--fabricated a creditable facsimile of somebody else's music, not jump blues this time but a brassy, Broadway pan-Gotham pastiche, sort of like West Side Story if you correct for talent differential and years elapsed. And because the new-wave Billy Joel is a role model, it's likable enough. But I prefer West Side Story, and I prefer jump-blues more. B-