Jimmy Rowles led the uncelebrated but busy life of a respected piano accompanist in California until he came east in 1973. Since then, Rowles has been acknowledged as one of jazz' great overlooked treasures: a sixty-years-young veteran with an ear for both the venerable and the contemporary, a nonpareil of sympathetic support, the purveyor of an unjustly neglected repertoire, and a committed improviser with a flair for subtle harmonic embellishment and blunt wit.

Record companies have been slow to join the Rowles renaissance, though his presence always seems to bring out the best in his companions. Now Norman Granz and Don Schlitten, two of the most demanding jazz producers and longtime associates of tenor saxophonists Zoot Sims and Al Cohn, respectively, are working with Rowles and heralding "If I'm Lucky" and Heavy Love with superlatives like "masterpiece" and "greatest ever."

Cohn and Sims, who have performed in tandem on and off for over twenty years, are indeed in high gear on these sessions. Like Stan Getz, who showcased Rowles last fall on The Peacocks, both men are white performers whose styles were formed in the late Forties by Lester Young and be-bop. (Excuse the racial classification, but it's worth noting how many of the truly great white jazz musicians are Young-inspired tenor players.) The Seventies have been good to each, with Sims adding a deeper mellowness to his sound that suggests the belated influence of Ben Webster, while Cohn burns with new vigor after too many years spent arranging rather than performing.

Despite Sims' and Cohn's inspired contributions, however, it's really Rowles who makes these releases special. On "If I'm Lucky", a quartet session, Sims allows the pianist to select and chart most of the material, and the result is an exhilarating program of eight substantial but often neglected tunes. "Shadow Waltz," "You're My Everything," "(I Wonder) Where Our Love Has Gone" and the title track will be familiar to listeners who know their Billie Holiday, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and Miles Davis.

Heavy Love, a duet encounter throughout, features an original blues and five great standards ("Them There Eyes," "These Foolish Things," et al.). Here, Jimmy Rowles meets Al Cohn's good-natured aggressiveness with a broad spectrum of ideas that range from stride piano to dissonant squibs, while on "If I'm Lucky", Rowles adopts an airier approach that plays off Zoot Sims and the rhythm section. Both albums contain intelligent, technically impeccable piano playing, with the differences in mood traceable to the coleaders: Rowles and Sims get mellow, while Rowles and Cohn bellow joyously. (RS 275)

BOB BLUMENTHAL