Kenny Wheeler, the inimitable Canadian trumpet maestro and quiet legend of post-1960s jazz composition, had been playing all kinds of modern jazz and improv in Britain for 16 years when he made this belated recording debut with his own pieces and a star-packed Dankworth-led orchestra. Wheeler would wryly observe that he liked the stories of losers more than heroes, so he dedicated Windmill Tilter to Cervantes' moth-eaten dreamer Don Quixote – a classic album now returning as part of Decca's new British Jazz Explosion series showcasing 1960s and ‘70s UK jazz landmarks. All Wheeler's signature compositional characteristics are already here – the short and shapely trumpet motifs dazzlingly embroidered by the arrangements, a harmonic sense drawing on models from Gil Evans to Paul Hindemith, lyrical themes steered toward improv deconstruction. Wheeler's mix of gleaming precision and bitter-sweet tonality on trumpet leads the soloing line, the reeds include Dankworth and the ever-quirky Tony Coe, and young bassist Dave Holland and guitarist John McLaughlin show exactly why Miles Davis would soon hire them. Among plenty of standouts, ‘Don The Dreamer’ beautifully balances strutting insistence and romance, the band's lissome countermelodies echo Birth of the Cool on ‘Bachelor Sam’, ‘The Cave of Montesinos’ is the quintessence of Wheeler's genius for distributing a small piece of catchy melody echoing all around the band from low brass to airy saxes, and ‘Propheticape’ builds from an intricate trumpet/alto sax conversation through rugged tenor sax and McLaughlin's Tal Farlow-like guitar breaks to a contrastingly tranquil finale. Windmill Tilter still sounds like the arrival of the contemporary-jazz gamechanger it was, and this Dankworth band was a world-class outfit.