A treasure revealed

IF Toronto-born Gil Evans (1912-1988) had never teamed up with Miles Davis to make such epochal albums as Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy and Bess (1958) or Sketches of Spain (1960), he would still figure as one of jazz's great big-band arrangers.

And, when you hear his other 1960 masterpiece Out of the Cool for the first time, without Miles's plangent horn, you begin to understand why.

Now reissued, this album, which is nearly half a century old, seethes with its own historical moment while never conceding its all-time beauty and immediacy.

Evans, like Ellington, honoured his soloists by never arranging themes and compositions which overwhelmed them. Out of the Cool offers freedom and creative opportunity to some of the most powerfully underestimated solo jazz geniuses of the age.

The startling trumpet solos are by Johnny Coles, who was born in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1926 and, despite his lyrical, often crying tone, was a jazzman who was fiendishly under-recorded through a long career as a sideman with Mingus, Herbie Hancock and Ray Charles. I remember him too with Ellington on his last British tour in 1973.

And playing tenor was the hugely versatile Texan horn born in Dallas in 1910, Budd Johnson, his greatness eclipsed not only by his own reticence but simply by being a contemporary of other momentous tenorists such as Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Lester Young.

Also on hand among the orchestral 15 were Mingus's frequent trombonist Jimmy Knepper, bassist Ron Carter, who was about to begin a long quintet association with Miles, and, on drums, Elvin Jones, who was shortly to achieve glory in the John Coltrane Quartet.

As a Canadian, Evans knew all about La Nevada, (Snowfall) - the opening title. It begins with repetitive piano notes and a series of chords by Ray Crawford's guitar before the growling trombones and full ensemble introduce Coles's dancing horn and further solos by Johnson and Carter in front of Jones's and Charlie Persip's fluttering drums.

Where Flamingos Fly is a gift for Knepper. With exquisite slide control and fluency, his gliding notes soar through the entire theme like the beat of giant wings.

Carter's bass provides the familiar melody for Bilbao Song from the musical drama Happy End by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. The ensemble repeats the theme over deeply springing percussion sounds, ending with a final menacing chord.

Sunken Treasure is a praise song, a paean to Coles's marvellous trumpet, only making you wish that he had recorded more. He improvises over a restrained ensemble, almost as if all his confreres were so affected by the beauty of his sound and the inventiveness of his tonal patterns that they had to give him all the sonic space that he needed.

The track only lasts for just over four minutes but it contains some of jazz's most beautiful moments. Coles spits out, bends, wails, caresses, sustains and winds his notes like the hornmaster he was on this track with the name that is almost a commentary on his life in jazz. Not quite, thankfully.

And thanks to Gil Evans too. He made other fine albums such as The Individualism of Gil Evans (1964), Svengali (1973) and even a tribute album to Jimmy Hendrix in 1974.

But Out of the Cool was the truly precious one and the one not to miss, now happily here for us again, its treasure freely revealed.