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Dexter Gordon: Recordings
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One of the great jazz tenor sax players, Dexter Gordon is best remembered by filmgoers for playing fictional sax player Dale Turner in Bertrand Tavernier's 'Round Midnight (1986). His realistic portrayal of a burned-out American jazz man who finds refuge in the cellar clubs of Paris earned Gordon an Oscar nomination -- making him the first instrumental musician to be so honored.
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Dexter Gordon was one of the most stylish of Jazz players throughout the decades. His tall six-foot five frame combined with his style of playing gave him an air of calm authority. Add to this his stylish appearance (nobody knew how to wear a suit better then Dexter Gordon, not even Miles Davis) and it is easy to see that this was a man who stood out from the crowd.
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Dexter Gordon had such a colorful and eventful life (with three separate comebacks) that his story would make a great Hollywood movie. The top tenor saxophonist to emerge during the bop era and possessor of his own distinctive sound, Gordon sometimes was longwinded and quoted excessively from other songs, but he created a large body of superior work and could battle nearly anyone successfully at a jam session.
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What this shows, as clearly as it can possibly shown, is that, unlike some of his peers, Dexter Gordon had been paying attention to what the players he had influenced had themselves been discovering. And not just paying casual attention to it either, but learning from it as well, adapting much of it to his own personal ends. Junior Mance, Martin Rivera, and Oliver Jackson, it seems, had not been. That's not a slam on them, since they did what they did just fine, and they probably had no pressing personal needs to go beyond where they already were. But when they came face-to-face with Dexter Gordon, it was obvious that Dexter wanted, probably in fact needed, to do something different than what he, and they, had been doing in the years before. And Gordon, being the powerful force that he was, went right on ahead and did it in spite of the reluctance or inability of his accompanists to keep up.
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Dexter Gordon Limited Edition CD Set - This 3 CD set captures Dexter Gordon with his first permanent working band. These 1978-79 recordings made informally at the Keystone capture the quartet at their zenith.
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The Jazzland side, originally released as The Resurgence of Dexter Gordon, is a perfectly fine date. In 1960, Dexter had emerged from a long, dark decade of drug addiction, complete with stints in prison, and was ready to resume playing in earnest. The group he assembled for this Los Angeles session -- trumpeter Martin Banks, trombonist Richard Boone, pianist Dolo Coker, bassist Charles Green, and drummer Larance Marable, members of L.A.'s predominantly African-American hard bop "underground" -- was one with which the tenor saxophonist no doubt felt personally and musically comfortable with, and it shows. Everybody plays with vigor, and the only "drawback" is that none of the players (with the possible exception of Marable) are quite in Dexter's league when it comes to skill and / or personality. (Then again, very few players have been!) This is a fun session which holds up quite well, and although it is justly overshadowed by the Blue Note albums that Gordon was soon to make as he continued his re-ascendancy to true greatness, it ... is quite enjoyable on its own terms.
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