by Alex Henderson
One of Ray Barretto's more erratic albums of the 1970s, Can You Feel It? is a collection of pop-jazz/crossover, fusion, and pop-soul that ranges from the exciting to the forgettable. Parts of this vinyl LP find the conguero wasting his considerable talents on lesser material, but other parts find him letting loose and taking chances. &Whirlpool,& &Daydreams,& and the insistent &Confrontation& are solid fusion instrumentals that would have been worthy of Return to Forever, and &Sting Ray& has the type of catchy jazz-funk groove that would have worked on one of Joe Farrell's CTI dates of the 1970s. Meanwhile, R&B singer Prince Philip Mitchell has a likable spot on the pleasant, if unremarkable, pop-soul number &What Part of Heaven Do You Come From?& But tunes like &Summer Sun,& &I Think About You,& and the discoish &Can You Feel It (Let It Groove You)& are bland, lightweight and uninteresting -- essentially, they're examples of a musical heavyweight playing background music. And when your resumé includes &Cocinando& and &Guarare,& the last thing in the world you should be doing is fading into the background. Out of print since the late 1970s, Can You Feel It? has yet to be reissued on CD.