Jazz Articles about Dexter Gordon

Dexter Gordon: Ladybird

by Derek Taylor
February 17, 2005

The latest offering from the seemingly bottomless Danmarks Radio Archive, Ladybird presents another air shot of Gordon's lengthy mid-1960s Café Montmarte stint. Dex's sizable cachet as an expatriate jazz icon prompted a nightly spooling of the tape machines. The resulting cache, so far doled out one set at a time, documents a particularly fertile time for the saxophonist. Shortly after arriving on European shores, he teamed with pianist Kenny Drew and a top-flight pair of locals in the persons of ...

Dexter Gordon: Mosaic Select 14

by John Kelman
January 26, 2005

Dexter Gordon Mosaic Select 14 Mosaic Records (B2-70985) 2004 While tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, long considered the bebop progenitor on his axe, recorded a number of classic sides for Blue Note in the '60s, including Go! and A Swingin' Affair , as well as seminal albums for Prestige including The Resurgence of Dexter Gordon and Setting the Pace , it's a surprising fact that he never had a steady working band ...

Dexter Gordon: The Complete Prestige Recordings

by John Kelman
December 15, 2004

Dexter Gordon The Complete Prestige Recordings Prestige (11PRCD-4442-2) 2004 “Even his walk is bebop" ~Bernard Tavernier, director of Round Midnight “The 6 foot 5 gentle giant of a man was also the personification of urbane wit and sophistication." ~Bruce Lundvall When one thinks of the progenitors of bebop, one typically thinks of artists including alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, pianists Thelonious Monk and ...

Dexter Gordon: Heartaches

by Derek Taylor
November 13, 2004

Steeplechase takes its Dexter Gordon stewardship seriously. Last year occasioned the label's release of a box set covering the saxophonist's Complete Quartet and Trio Studio Sessions. In the months since that monumental release, air-shots from concerts at the Montmarte Jazz Haus circa summer 1965 have made their way into circulation. This latest entry finds Dex fronting a familiar rhythm section comprised of fellow expatriate Kenny Drew on piano and Danes Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen on bass and Alex Riel on trap ...

Dexter Gordon: The Complete Prestige Recordings

by Charlie B. Dahan
October 13, 2004

October 12th bears witness to a superb all-inclusive examination of one of jazz's great saxophone players and composers, Dexter Gordon. The eleven-disc collection The Complete Prestige Recordings contains eighty-eight tracks. Of those, most are from Gordon's repertoire as a bandleader, with a few tracks included as a sideman or co-leader with Gene Ammons, Wardell Gray and Booker Ervin. Appropriately enough, the box set kicks off with a nine-plus minute live track jam with Wardell Gray. This track ...

Dexter Gordon: The Complete Prestige Sessions

by Craig Jolley
October 4, 2004

Dexter Gordon The Complete Prestige Sessions Prestige 2004

In company with Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane Dexter Gordon was recognized as one of the tenor sax giants of his era. (I'd say Stan Getz made as many classic records as the others, but he was “just" a great player who didn't comparably influence other musicians.) The Complete Prestige Sessions focuses on Gordon's late '60s-early '70s music when he lived in Copenhagen but ...

Dexter Gordon: A Musical Biography

by Larry Koenigsberg
March 8, 2004

by Stan Britt Da Capo Press (New York, 1989)

Although there's plenty of fascinating material in this show-biz biography of the great master of bebop tenor saxophone, it's so permeated with gush and hyperbole that it requires some tolerance to sift through it for Gordon's story. The details are there, though, from his upbringing in Los Angeles as the son of a physician who died when Gordon was 12, his mingling with other young or established musicians in ...