Gravity and Resurgence: The Many Dimensions of Dexter Gordon

Long Tall Dexter; swinger, bebopper, saxophone balladeer; acting the dissipated genius expatriate who was not unlike himself in the movie Round Midnight; his dressed-up persona "Society Red;" the laconic elder statesman of his later years. Dexter Gordon is all those things, but more than a kaleidoscope of caricatures.

Those who trace their lineages through Sonny Rollins or John Coltrane and beyond contain within them the earlier influence of Dexter Gordon. Joshua Redman, among contemporary players, attributes his robust sound to the Los Angeles-born saxophonist. Gordon is credited with bringing the bebop innovations of Charlie Parker energetically but less flamboyantly to the tenor saxophone. He understood Parker's harmonics, and retained from older players the swing of Lester Young, the depth of Ben Webster, and the lushness of Coleman Hawkins. He prized tone over speed in the service of melody, but could play at bebop's fast tempos.

His presence alone could hypnotize. "He says, 'Hello,' and the sparkles pour out of him like a tail, a comet, a fire, and his tone and energy force us back so we might hold on to the table not to be blown away," wrote archivist Henrik Wolsgaard-Iversen of an appearance in Copenhagen during Gordon's long residence there.

Another visitor to Copenhagen in 1964 met a girl, stayed on for two weeks upon that invitation, and spent ten of those fourteen nights at the Café Jazzhüs Montmartre to hear Gordon, Neils-Henning Ørsted Pedersen on bass, Tete Montoliu on piano, and Alex Riel on drums. "I was from Los Angeles and halfway around the world here I was nightly having the rare privilege of hearing the fabulous Dexter Gordon backed by an 18-year-old bassist from Norway, a blind Spanish pianist, and a local Dane on drums," are recalled in comments in Don McGlynn's Gordon documentary More Than You Know (1996) (available on YouTube). The album Montmartre 1964 (Storyville, 2020) is an audio snapshot of the period, and there are many other releases from SteepleChase Records of Gordon's Danish residency.

Drummer Alex Riel recalled that Gordon loved playing Café Jazzhüs Montmartre and the openness of Danish culture, and often stayed and jammed along with a nightshift band that took over after the headliners, playing until early morning. "I clearly remember us standing outside Montmartre one bright summer morning when the milkman came by. In those days the milkman drove around delivering bottles of milk to the front doors of apartment buildings in Copenhagen." Riel said that Gordon "owned" Copenhagen. Even schoolchildren recognized him and called out "Hi, Dex!" as the lanky American pedaled his bicycle around the city.

Gordon often approached the bandstand slowly; made carefully enunciated, or sometimes mumbled, but nevertheless profound introductions to songs, emphasizing the titles, reciting the lyrics to clarify the meaning behind the music. A song might begin pitched as sharp as a duck call, but then proceed with melodic revelations. From bebop, there was the understanding of chord substitutions, rhythmic variations, quarter-note pauses followed by flurries of eighth notes and faster phrasing. Pianists, drummers, and bassists fell in line behind him. His control of his horn and his audience resulted from years of practice, and also the lessons of lost years.

Gordon's first recordings show him already stretching out from swing. Some of the period from 1945 to 1947 is captured in the compilation Long Tall Dexter: The Savoy Sessions (Savoy Records, 1978), including drummers Art Blakey, Max Roach, and Shadow Wilson; pianists Bud Powell, Tadd Dameron and Hank Jones; Fats Navarro on trumpet; J.J. Johnson and Trummy Young on trombone. The immediate next period, for the Savoy and Dial labels, gathered in Dexter Gordon 1947-1952 (Classics Records, 2003), includes him with other tenors in "The Duel" with Teddy Edwards and "The Chase" with Wardell Gray.

The son of a doctor, Gordon's grandfather received a Medal of Honor in the Spanish-American War; other ancestors were locally prominent in settling the American West. He attended high school in Los Angeles with students that included Melba Liston, Art Farmer, Chico Hamilton, and Sonny Criss, all of whom later achieved renown.

So strong is his mature image that is hard to imagine him as a schoolboy, yet he was, and a prodigy. Melba Liston recalled in interviews that later became included in Sophisticated Giant (University of California Press, 2018), a biography on Gordon, that with other music they played all the time, hours practicing together in living rooms and garages before and after school, and in school marching bands, swing bands and a light classical orchestra. They pondered chord changes, transposition and songwriting, and for all their wildness were serious students about music. Understanding theory and navigation over the keys of the horn from a young age served him well later with bebop's altered scales and relocated chords.

Gordon evoked his youth for journalist Pete Hamill's liner notes to Manhattan Symphonies (Columbia, 1978). "Everything was about music for me then. The band that really turned me on was (Count) Basie, but I listened to all the bands. I was starting to buy used 78s from the garage of a jukebox dealer. (Jimmy) Lunceford, Marshall Royal, Teddy Wilson, Billie Holiday, Pee Wee Russell. The radio stations out of New York coming from Roseland and the hotels: Earl Hines, Coleman Hawkins' big band, Roy Eldridge, Les Hite, Freddy Martin. So after a while, I more or less knew them. So when I finally came to New York, I said 'No problem.'"

A lust for life was present in the young and old Gordon, and as much as he encountered problems with intoxicants, his energy fueled a continuing devotion to performance. He described himself with the other young lions in Billy Eckstine's big band of the mid-1940s: "They hung out together, practiced together, got high together, and were bad boys together until they got on the bandstand together and then they were the best saxophone section out there. The Unholy Four: Dexter Gordon, John Jackson, Leo Parker, Sonny Stitt."

But there were mid-career drug imprisonments that caused him to miss much of the post-bebop innovations of the 1950s. This was followed by a revival in the 1960s with a series of classic Blue Note Records albums. His residency in Europe lasted for more than a decade, but he was still often involved with substances. fThough he found renewed acclaim in his final years he suffered an all-too-early death at 67 years of age . Dexter acknowledged it "took many years to work it out and to come to myself."

With All the Cats

His first visit to New York came at age 17 in 1940 when he left high school to join the Lionel Hampton band. On the corner of 126th Street and Eighth Avenue in Harlem, he looked around and felt as if he was home there, far from his origins in Los Angeles. There was a whole society of musicians and collateral entertainments, women, pimps, gamblers, hustlers, around the Braddock Hotel and Grill, and although he stayed at the Harlem YMCA, it did not matter.

"It was heaven on earth. It was everything I'd dreamed and visualized and there I was, 17 years old, standing on the corner with the cats. All these cats walking around. Ben, Lester, Billie, Charles Shavers, Roy (Eldridge), Milt Hinton, (Sid) Catlett. All right there. I couldn't believe it."

Three years later he returned with the Hampton band to play an engagement at the Apollo Theater. For all the gravitas Gordon acquired with age, he recalled the bravado and nervousness of his youth. After the show some of the band members including Gordon decided to visit Minton's, the nightclub that was an incubator for the emergence of bebop.

Lester Young and Ben Webster were sitting in with the house band rhythm section of Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, and Oscar Pettiford. Young and Webster were both seated. Young was wearing his pork-pie hat, and Webster a snap-brim Knox fedora complete with feather. Dexter was encouraged by his bandmates to step into a jam session chaired by Monk.

Gordon tiptoed up to the stand and found a chair behind the masters Young and Webster. Monk laughed and mimed "What you doing up here, boy?" Dexter grinned and pointed to the companions encouraging him from a corner.

The band was playing the standard "Sweet Georgia Brown," and Monk gave him the okay to enter. Gordon began to play and thought he was doing well. After eight bars, Webster said "Who the hell is this?," and turned his whole stiff-necked portly body around to see. There Gordon found himself "staring into these bulging Frog eyes" of a musical legend. "I almost swallowed my mouthpiece."

On the other hand, after a half chorus, Lester Young stretched out and casually, coolly, looked back and appraised him with just a once-over pass. Dexter survived, played a couple of choruses not to overstay, and packed up and left as the band finished. He was glad to have emerged in one piece, but overnight the word was out that he had sparred with these champions. He felt an affinity between boxers and musicians, he said. "Both professions take plenty of heart and only a few become legends. Both take study, practice, dedication, and courage."

Gordon's path would cross with Webster's years later when they performed and recorded together and lived in Copenhagen at the same time. After Webster's death his Selmer Mark VI tenor saxophone became available for sale; Gordon purchased it and used it as his horn until the end of his own life, in tribute to Webster and Webster's sound.

Collaborations

Returning to Los Angeles, Gordon briefly recorded under his own name with a quintet that met on weeknight off-hours and included the older and experienced Nat King Cole and Harry "Sweets" Edison. He then spent two months with Fletcher Henderson and his Orchestra. Gordon was then hired by Louis Armstrong for his orchestra, where he remained until the lure of Billy Eckstine, whose music Gordon found more challenging and exciting than Armstrong's. But Gordon always spoke well of Armstrong, that his education there in a big band section helped with other orchestras and later in arranging for small combos. From many reports the two men also shared an interest in cannabis, Armstrong preferring Gordon's "Mexican mota" over his own New Orleans Golden Leaf, which he said was like bringing a hamburger to Gordon's banquet.

In notes for an autobiography repeated in Sophisticated Giant, Gordon declared he had found everything about the jazz life enthralling, the musicians and other colorful characters he met, the gigs, the food, the beautiful women, even the long bus rides to new places, but especially the after-hours sessions. He made plans for a screenplay that would describe life on the road and the dedication of young musicians. He wanted the world to know what it was like to be with these great young musicians and to show how dedicated they were to the music and to each other.

"The body of fertile music that young jazz musicians produced in the middle of the twentieth century was the product of years of working together in close community —studying together, eating together, and playing together," he wrote. "These relationships made over a period of six months to a year are like schoolboy bonds that last a lifetime. The difference is that these boys become men at 17 or 18. They have a mission. They were born with a common goal and have dedicated themselves to learning to play jazz and to spread the word in order to enrich people's lives."

But these were not church choirs he belonged to. Dexter recalled in the biography another night in New York in 1945 after closing time when Billie Holiday invited him, then age 22, to join her and other friends for an escapade. "Come on, baby," she teased. "I'm going to show you something special this morning." Dexter responded with a simple "OK" that he was game.

They got into a Lincoln Continental and drove uptown to a building with a fancy awning, an outside doorman in uniform and another one at an interior desk. A message was relayed that they were there to see Madame Mae, and they were allowed in to an elevator to the sixth floor. There another man in a kind of India-style Nehru suit ushered them into an apartment living room of sofas, settees, easy chairs, pillows, cushions, lush purple drapes and a white baby grand piano. Dexter came to understand "it was a den of iniquity for those who really liked it hot."

It offered the very best quality cocaine, heroin, smoking opium (Hop Sing) and filtered marijuana cigarettes with a Crescent Moon trademark: "Authentic goods," Gordon certified. It catered, he said, to the top entertainers of Harlem and Broadway, big-time playboys and pimps and their ladies. "Society people from Park Avenue and invariably members of the mob, the numbers barons and others of that stature." Madame Mae entered bejeweled in a shimmering hostess gown to greet them. Dexter, with the manners of a gentleman, offered "Hello and nice to meet you too." Madame Mae replied "My pleasure indeed," and directed a male assistant to show the guests to the "Hop Sing room." The night continued on behind closed doors.

Disruption and Departure

After leaving the Eckstine band Gordon worked with Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Buck Clayton and Sir Charles Thompson before recording under his own name for Savoy. While the 1940s were exciting, they closed for him with the first of several drug convictions extending into the 1950s, which mostly removed him from circulation.

A couple of sessions for Bethlehem Records were made in a window of parole in 1955, compiled on the reissue Dexter Gordon Plays: The Bethlehem Years (Fresh Sound Records, 2015). His playing and accompanists were strong, with signature songs "Darn That Dream" and "Autumn Leaves" that he revisited for another thirty years, and an interpretation of Charlie Parker's "Confirmation" that distinguishes his tenor treatment from Parker's alto original. But it was not long before Gordon was returned for detentions over another five years.

Although incarcerated, he continued to practice and play in prison bands with other inmates who also had fallen foul of drug prosecutions. Upon release, in 1960 alto player Cannonball Adderley, scouting on behalf of Riverside Records, heard Gordon and invited him to lead a studio date which yielded The Resurgence of Dexter Gordon for the subsidiary Jazzland Recordings With that as a calling card, Gordon engaged with Blue Note for a series of albums in the period 1961-1965.

Removed from the scene in his late 20s, he was nearing 40 before his career resumed. The world of the 1960s was far from that of the 1940s, and it is remarkable that Gordon brought a style that was relevant to the new times. From two dates in May 1961, Dexter Calling and Doin' Allright initiated his return and signified that he was indeed alright, on one cover photograph dialed in at a phone booth, on the other grandly sitting in a horse-drawn carriage at New York's Central Park. Pianist Sonny Clark with a rhythm section of Billy Higgins on drums and Butch Warren on bass backed Gordon for Go and A Swingin' Affair recorded within two days of each other in August 1962.

Gordon considered Go one of his best outings. The songs "Cheese Cake" and "Love for Sale" express his tone and phrasing style, and his treatment of the torch-song "I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry" typifies his moody approach to ballads.

Soon thereafter, though, Gordon left for Europe. His drug history made it difficult to get a cabaret card needed to perform in New York City, and he had heard that Europe was more welcoming to black musicians. He moved between Copenhagen and Paris, settling in Copenhagen longest, and remained mostly in Europe for about a decade and a half, with only brief returns to the United States. Through the course of his life, in America and abroad, there were as well marriages, other relationships, and children.

Among Friends

He encountered eclectic assemblages for accompaniment at the Jazzhüs Montmartre and other locations in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and France, with local players, regional talent and other Americans who were passing through or themselves had chosen to be expatriates. Among the visitors were Jackie McLean, Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin, Kenny Dorham, Albert Tootie Heath, pianists Hampton Hawes and Horace Parlan.

As Blue Note wanted more output from him, the label had to go to Europe to get it. Our Man in Paris was recorded there in 1963 with Bud Powell on piano and Kenny Clarke on drums, both of whom had also left the U.S., and a native Parisian on drums, Pierre Michelot. Powell, Clarke and Michelot had played together frequently after Powell moved to Paris in 1959. The album contains characteristic pieces for Gordon's approach to bebop, "Scrapple From the Apple" and "Night in Tunisia;" the sprightly "Willow Weep for Me," and the languid "Stairway to the Stars."

One Flight Up was recorded in Paris in 1964, again for Blue Note, with Donald Byrd on trumpet, pianist Kenny Drew, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen on bass and Art Taylor on drums. Gordon spreads out upon the rhythmic 18-minute "Tanya," and the melancholy yet ever-hopeful ballad "Darn that Dream."

In a short visit to the United States in May 1965, Gordon was invited back to the New Jersey studio of sound engineer Rudy Van Gelder for Blue Note and Gettin' Around. He is heard to have had a less aggressive approach than before his European sojourn, but merged well with the improvisations of Bobby Hutcherson on vibes, who had been on Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch (Blue Note, 1964) experiment in avant-garde the previous year.

In that same month, same place, he teamed with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, Barry Harris on piano, Bob Cranshaw on bass and Billy Higgins again on drums in sessions that were not released until 1979 as Clubhouse. Even Blue Note's own website remarks without further explanation at the mystery of how such quality work sat in the company's vaults for years; perhaps an abundance of riches, too much product for a saturated marketplace.

Gordon also recorded extensively for the Prestige Records label, and recordings from 1950 to 1973 are collected in the 11-CD, 88-song Complete Prestige Recordings (11PRCD-4442-2) tracking him from the 1950s tenor chases with fellow swing/bop tenorist Wardell Gray, through assorted work with James Moody, Gene Ammons, Jimmy Heath, Rufus Reid, and others, and later with Freddie Hubbard and pianist Cedar Walton. Individual albums that are the component parts of that collection remain available too.

Return, Homecoming, Remembrance

Gordon returned to the United States in the mid-1970s, re-introducing himself with engagements at San Francisco's Keystone Korner through the invitation of club owner Todd Barkan, and the newly-opened Kuumbwa down the Pacific coast in Santa Cruz, just because it was en route to home in Los Angeles. In 1976, the great revival in his career was initiated in New York, commemorated with the album Homecoming—Live At the Village Vanguard (Columbia Legacy).

Upon that acclaim, other Columbia recordings of club dates and festival performances followed; returns to Keystone Korner captured for Capitol Records; and on varied smaller labels. From the earlier swing and bebop eras now thoroughly modern, it was if a figure from a jazz Mt. Rushmore was walking among mortals, and his career blossomed again.

Gordon last played in Copenhagen in 1983, back at Jazzhüs Montmartre, memorialized again by Storyville in Copenhagen Coda with a band of Americans that had been with him for several years: Kirk Lightsey, piano; David Eubanks, bass; and Eddie Gladden, drums. It is a farewell to the city and the people he loved. Not released until 2023, the centennial of Gordon's birth, Gordon and his sidemen are as strong as in any of his work his since 1960.

Three songs run for more than ten minutes each, as if Gordon knows he must go but delays his departure. "It's You or No One" is titled as if a personal message, sprinkled with little gifts of references to other songs, and is more energetic even than when first recorded by him in 1961. "Hanky Panky" is a playful piece built over a "Blues March" bass line and dates from the 1965 session that had been held back until Clubhouse in 1979. The band storms through a Hoagy Carmichael composition, "Backstairs," that had become part of their later repertoire. The longest piece, "More Than You Know," continues for over 18 minutes at a meditative, breathy pace, as if Dexter is considering his Danish memories past anyone else could know.

In 1987, he accompanied Tony Bennett on a tribute to the music of Irving Berlin, Bennett-Berlin (Columbia), playing "White Christmas;" nothing corny: instead, longing and soaring, with a wisp of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" on the outro. Gordon had always been known to insert fragments from other songs, often Christmas bits, into his improvisations.

In 1988 on a jazz cruise, Gordon played one last number on the prodding of trumpeter Clark Terry against a jibe that Gordon could not play anymore. He spent days in his stateroom working over his music and resting, sun bathing and swimming, preparing, as others went shopping. Afterwards, his last wife and widow Maxine Gordon, the author of the Sophisticated Giant biography, recalled that trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, also on the cruise, told him he sounded pretty good, and encouraged him to keep practicing. Gillespie had been in the Eckstine band when Gordon first joined it. Gordon felt that only Gillespie and Parker as its co-founders had ever truly mastered the shifts of bebop, and appreciated the acknowledgement from the old band mate he knew and addressed as "John," John Birks Gillespie.

Gordon passed away in 1990 of kidney failure. Jazzhüs Montmartre remains the center for jazz in Copenhagen, at its original address in Old Town at 19A Store Regnegade, still with only 86 seats as when it opened in 1959. These days it offers around 200 concert dates a year, on calendar prominence built by Gordon when he played most nights of a week. It has been remodeled several times, gone through other iterations, closed and reopened, but is now back to its original purpose as a jazz venue. A photo of Dexter Gordon is displayed in a front window. As with New York's Village Vanguard, the other existing bracket to Gordon's career, its walls are said to remember it all.

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