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Gravity and Resurgence: The Many Dimensions of Dexter Gordon
Courtesy The Dexter Gordon Society
They hung out together, practiced together, got high together, and were bad boys together... and then they were the best saxophone section out there.
—Dexter Gordon
Dexter Gordon
saxophone, tenor1923 - 1990
Those who trace their lineages through
Sonny Rollins
saxophoneb.1930
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
Joshua Redman
saxophoneb.1969
Charlie Parker
saxophone, alto1920 - 1955
Lester Young
saxophone1909 - 1959
Ben Webster
saxophone, tenor1909 - 1973
Coleman Hawkins
saxophone, tenor1904 - 1969
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, " data-original-title="" title="">Neils-Henning ?rsted Pedersen on bass,
Tete Montoliu
piano1933 - 1997
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
drums1919 - 1990
Max Roach
drums1925 - 2007
Shadow Wilson
drums1919 - 1959
Bud Powell
piano1924 - 1966
Tadd Dameron
piano1917 - 1965
Hank Jones
piano1918 - 2010
Fats Navarro
trumpet1923 - 1950
J.J. Johnson
trombone1924 - 2001
Trummy Young
tromboneb.1912
Teddy Edwards
saxophone, tenor1924 - 2003
Wardell Gray
saxophone, tenor1921 - 1955
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
trombone1926 - 1999
Art Farmer
flugelhorn1928 - 1999
Chico Hamilton
drums1921 - 2013
Sonny Criss
saxophone, alto1927 - 1977
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
saxophone, alto
Teddy Wilson
piano1912 - 1986
Billie Holiday
vocals1915 - 1959
Pee Wee Russell
clarinet1906 - 1969
Earl Hines
piano1903 - 1983
Roy Eldridge
trumpet1911 - 1989
Freddy Martin
saxophone, tenor1906 - 1983
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
vocals1914 - 1993
Leo Parker
saxophone, baritone1925 - 1962
Sonny Stitt
saxophone1924 - 1982
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 " data-original-title="" title="">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
vibraphone1908 - 2002
"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
bass, acoustic1910 - 2000
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
piano1917 - 1982
Kenny Clarke
drums1914 - 1985
Oscar Pettiford
bass1922 - 1960
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
piano and vocals1919 - 1965
Harry "Sweets" Edison
trumpet1915 - 1999
Fletcher Henderson
arranger1897 - 1952
Louis Armstrong
trumpet and vocals1901 - 1971
Billy Eckstine
vocals1914 - 1993
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
trumpet1926 - 1991
Buck Clayton
trumpet1911 - 1991
Sir Charles Thompson
piano1918 - 2016
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
saxophone1928 - 1975
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
piano1931 - 1963
Billy Higgins
drums1936 - 2001
Butch Warren
bass1939 - 2013
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
saxophone, alto1932 - 2006
Gene Ammons
saxophone, tenor1925 - 1974
Johnny Griffin
saxophone, tenor1928 - 2008
Kenny Dorham
trumpet1924 - 1972
Albert Tootie Heath
drums1935 - 2024
Hampton Hawes
piano1928 - 1977
Horace Parlan
piano1931 - 2017
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
piano1924 - 1966
Pierre Michelot
bass, acousticb.1928
One Flight Up was recorded in Paris in 1964, again for Blue Note, with
Donald Byrd
trumpet1932 - 2013
Kenny Drew
piano1928 - 1993
Art Taylor
drums1929 - 1995
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
vibraphone1941 - 2016
Eric Dolphy
woodwinds1928 - 1964
In that same month, same place, he teamed with trumpeter
Freddie Hubbard
trumpet1938 - 2008
Barry Harris
piano1929 - 2021
Bob Cranshaw
bass1932 - 2016
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
woodwinds1925 - 2010
Jimmy Heath
saxophone, tenor1926 - 2020
Rufus Reid
bass, acousticb.1944
Cedar Walton
piano1934 - 2013
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
pianob.1937
Eddie Gladden
b.1937Three 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
vocals1926 - 2023
Irving Berlin
composer / conductor1888 - 1989
In 1988 on a jazz cruise, Gordon played one last number on the prodding of trumpeter
Clark Terry
trumpet1920 - 2015
Dizzy Gillespie
trumpet1917 - 1993
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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