Dexter Gordon "Our Man in Paris"- The Blue Note Years Part 6

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“Gordon feels that the absence of big bands today has cheated the younger musicians. "A pet peeve or gripe of mine is the lack of big bands, which are so essential for young musicians," he said. "The experience you get in a big band, you don't get anywhere else. It develops your tone, your intonation. The discipline that you get in a big band, you just don't get in a small group. Slurring, attacking, phrasing—in a small group it's at a minimum."

The sound that Gordon produces is strong proof of the validity of his preachment. Separated from his attack, which itself is quite varied and a formidable tool, it serves as a powerful means of communication. British writer Michael James has called Gordon's lower-register sound "cavernous" — and, to be sure, there are some beautiful formations in that cavern. 

His middle range can be lighter, toward Lester Young; or harder, toward Charlie Parker; the upper reaches contain that eerily beautiful wail that almost seems to emanate from his throat. Dizzy Gillespie's Blue 'N Boogie, recorded in early 1945, was Gordon's first small-group recording after he hit Fifty-second Street. His solo contains the "scream" that ten years later showed up in John Coltrane's work with the Miles Davis Quintet.

Some think that more than Gordon's sound was affected by his Hampton days. Michael James, in referring to the Savoy records Dexter made in 1945-1946 (Dexter's Deck, Long, Tall Dexter, etc.), wrote: "It is tempting to see in the early part of Gordon's career, especially his spell with Hampton, influences that helped to shape his style. The forthright, even-noted swing and square-cut turn of phrase to be heard on his 1945 and 1946 sessions for Savoy recall the regular melodic outlines of Hampton's improvisation rather than the shifting accents of Lester Young, or even the comparatively symmetrical patterns of a Chu Berry. It seems likely that he took Illinois Jacquet as an exemplar. Besides the strong tonal resemblance, Gordon was very ready to indulge in the repeated-note motifs that were part of Jacquet's stock-in-trade. 

Whether these similarities were coincidental or not, Gordon's achievement was to present, as early as 1946, a taste of Parker's harmonic richness in a framework that was no less than conservative in its attachment to the beat, and to do this in a way logical enough to make for a style that was individual, integrated and unfailingly cogent."

- Ira Gitler, Jazz Masters of the 40s

In 1955, Gordon recorded again for the first time in three years. Two LPs were done for Bethlehem, one with Stan Levey and the other under his own name, called Daddy Plays the Horn. The third album, Dexter Blows Hot and Cool, was for Dootone. In a 1961 Jazz Monthly article, Michael James commented on some of the performances on these 1950’s LP's; "All four demonstrate Gordon's quicksilver swing, his audacity in the upper register, his tonal power and the apt use he makes of inflection whenever he contrasts a sustained note with those complex, elbowing phrases he manages with so expert a sense of time,"

- Ira Gitler, Jazz Masters of the 40s

As Michael Cuscuna explains in the postscript to the CD release of Dexter Gordon: Our Man in Paris [CDP 7 46394 2] which was originally issued by Blue Note as an LP in 1963: “This album was supposed to have Kenny Drew on piano and feature a program of all new Gordon compositions. Due to various circumstances. Bud Powell replaced Drew. Since he would not play any new compositions, a set of standards and jazz classics was quickly chosen during the rehearsal. The result is one of Dexter Gordon's finest albums and some of Bud's best playing in the sixties.” 

This time around, the distinguished Jazz author and critic Nat Hentoff does the insert notes honors to Our Man in Paris which Maxine Gordon in her Dexter bio asserts “was to become one of Dexter’s most popular recordings and it remains a classic to this day.” In my opinion, Nat is at his descriptive best in terms of his description of the elements and ingredients that make Dexter’s style so distinctive.

“THE renascence of Dexter Gordon has been one of the most sanguine events in recent jazz history. After a brilliant early career with Lionel Hampton, the Billy Eckstine big band and Charlie Parker, the tall, forty-year old Californian slid into limbo during most of the 1950's. It was known that he was in California, but he had ceased to be a presence on the jazz scene. Musicians remembered him — as is indicated by his influence on the evolving styles in those years of Sonny Rollins anil John Coltrane — but most of the jazz public and the critics had either forgotten Gordon or assumed that his career had evaporated. As British critic Daniel Halperin noted when the resurgent Dexter played London in 1962, the second career of Gordon "has been an unusual transformation because usually, on the jazz scene, when they fade away they hardly ever come back. And there was a time when . . . Dexter Gordon was definitely near vanishing point."

The road back started in 1960 when Dexter Gordon wrote the music for and performed in the west coast edition of Jack Gelber's The Connection. The next year, Alfred Lion of Blue Note invited Dexter to return to New York for recordings. The albums since — Doin’ All Right (Blue Note 4077), Dexter Calling (Blue Note 4083), Go! (Blue Note 4112) — have firmly re-established Gordon as a major voice in jazz.

Dcxler is now based in Paris, where this album was recorded in May, 1963. Shortly after the session was made. Dexter was asked by a reporter for the French monthly, Jazz, whether he thought he was playing better today than at previous stages in his career. "Certainly," Dexter answered. "I'm much more lucid and have a stronger sense of equilibrium. My musical conception is much surer. I know where I'm going now. I am just as spontaneous as I used to be, but I know much more about music. I've traveled a long road in jazz ... I can't regain the time I've lost, but I've learned from ihe experience and it's not impossible to shape a future which will have profited from the time that was lost."

Dexter was once asked, "What would you like most to see printed behind your name?" His answer was: "I'd like to see something about the fact that I'm constantly searching for ways to improve." The persistence of that search has been evident in all of his recent Blue Note recordings, including this one. Alan Beckett, a critic for the British Jazz Journal, observed during a Gordon stay in London in 1962: ''As one of the first musicians to make constructive adaptations of Parker's harmonic developments to the tenor saxophone, and as one of the greatest influences upon many of the most productive musicians in contemporary jazz, his historical importance is very great. But he is not only a link, and although his recent records indicate that he has borrowed to some extent from his own disciples, his playing over here shows him to be a mature and consolidated stylist, from whose work great satisfaction can be derived."

In this Paris album, Dexter's colleagues have a long history as a unit in that city. Kenny Clarke, the key initial shaper of modern jazz drumming, has been an expatriate in Paris since 1956. Bud Powell has lived there since 1959. Pierre Michelot is one of the most respected bassists in Europe, and he has worked and recorded with a wide range of visiting American jazzmen —- among them, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. In 1959, Clarke, Powell and Michelot formed a trio, the Three Bosses, which worked together for a long time. This, therefore, is not a date with a pick-up rhythm section. Dexter is heard here in the context of a rhythm team which long ago learned to fuse each of its elements into a flowing unified whole.

From the start of Scrapple From The Apple, the sheer strength, the virility of Gordon's horn is unquenchably evident. His tone is assertive but warm; his beat is enveloping; and his conception indicates, as

French writer Demetre Ioakimidis notes that "Gordon has always emphasized swing and melodic development" in his playing. Now, however, there is increased, irrepressible confidence and more venturesome and diversified use of pitch and texture as expressive devices. Furthermore, he sets up and sustains a momentum in a performance such as Scrapple From The Apple that is fiercely, contagiously exciting. There are no hesitations, no skating on technical runs while ideas are being regrouped. Dexter plays as if he could hardly contain all he wants to say. Beneath the marked power, there is also the surge of even more latent force. But Powell's solo is fluent and well-organized, confirming a recent report by "Cannonball" Adderley that Bud, when he is stimulated by his musical surroundings, remains an absorbing pianist.

Willow Weep For Me illustrates what Alan Beckett has called Gordon's "gruff lyricism." In this performance, moreover, that lyricism is unusually incisive. This could be termed a dramatic reading of the ballad. There is no flaccidity in Gordon's ballad work. It contains as much surging strength as do his up tempo swingers, but the strength is disciplined into spare, penetratingly lucid patterns. The overall shape of Gordon's solo is remarkably cohesive, a further indication that while Gordon remains as spontaneous as ever, the increased emotional maturity and musical acumen of the added years have channeled that spontaneity into more memorable and more substantial shapes. There is also much more of a speech-like quality to his phrasing. This is not simply an exercise in technical fluency. Dexter's interpretation of Willow Weep For Me is in the vintage jazz tradition of telling a striking, personal story. The same is true of Bud Powell's statement which is also spare and tensile. Michelot has matured from his earlier recordings, and his solo in Willow Weep For Me is deep-toned, cleanly executed and imaginative.

Broadway, once a vehicle for Lester Young (the strongest early influence on Gordon's playing) is an intriguing, concise history of one major trend in jazz tenor playing. There are traces of Lester as well as signs of the later Gordon style which affected Rollins and Coltrane. In addition, annealing all these cross-influences, is the present Gordon who has absorbed these elements, including what he has chosen to adapt from his disciples, into a powerfully individualistic way of expression. Again, as in Scrapple From The Apple, there is the overwhelming presence of the man — the climate of crackling emotional excitement which never lets up but rather increases in intensity. Note too, in some of the exclamatory uses of pitch, how Gordon has found his own way into at least part of the terrain of the current jazz avant-garde. Throughout the track and the album, spurring the soloists and keeping the time crisply alive, is the superbly lithe drumming of Kenny Clarke. As for Bud, in addition to his own ebullient solo, listen to the echo of Count Basie he brings in at the close.

Stairway To The Stars is another aspect of Gordon's balladry. At first gentler and more introspective than Willow Weep For Me, the performance reveals the warmth and depth of tone Gordon can draw from the horn. And yet, the spine of the interpretation remains steel-like. It is this quality — a firm sense of direction and what I referred to before as sheer strength of emotion — which most instantly identifies anything Gordon does. And as is also characteristic, there is the sure, judicious choice of notes. The lesson of economy was one of the most valuable Gordon learned from Lester Young, and it is a lesson to which he has returned during his current renascence. Bud Powell's solo is almost song-like in its particular quality of lyricism and discloses an especially serene side of Powell's current work.

The final A Night In Tunisia is a summation of the renewed Dexter Gordon — the soaring assurance, the delight in improvising, the unflagging resourcefulness and the bursting ardor of his attack. Gordon has said that he is happier now than he has ever been before, and those high spirits are pervasively clear in this album. It is a happiness, however, which is not likely to lead to coasting. At the core of Dexter's commitment to music is a restless desire to learn and to express more of what he feels. As he told one British writer after having scored a notable triumph in London, "No, I'm not wholly satisfied at the moment; my career is just beginning."”

—NAT HENTOFF

Dan Morgenstern Sessions Notes from the Boxed Set Booklet -

(H) MAY 23,1963

“In Blue Note's history, Frank Wolff, while certainly significant, is usually viewed as that of a junior partner to Alfred Lion. In this instance, however, Frank was in the producer's chair and came up with one of the jewel's in the label's crown. This is a jazz summit meeting. Dexter was no stranger to fellow jazz masters Bud Powell (his junior by more than a year) and Kenny Clarke (his senior by nine) and indeed had recorded with both before. (Powell was on Dexter's second session as a leader, in early 1946, and Clarke was present three years later when Dexter recorded with Tadd Dameron for Capitol.) At this point in time, all three were at various stages of the expatriate experience. Dexter was at the threshold of what would become a long European sojourn; his love affair with Denmark had begun in the fall of 1962. Bud Powell was in his fifth year as a resident of France and 14 months away from his fateful return to America. Kenny Clarke, who'd first visited Europe in 1938 as member of the Edgar Hayes band, and again in 1948 with Dizzy Gillespie, spent much of the period from 1949 to 1951 in Paris, and in the fall of 1956 permanently settled in France He'd encountered bassist Pierre Michelot during his first Paris period. The Frenchman, born in St. Denis in 1928, started on piano at 7 but switched to bass in 1946 due to his growing interest in jazz. He soon became one of Europe's best jazz players, working and recording with compatriots and visitors, including Dizzy, Monk, Miles and Lester. In 1959, he joined forces with Powell and Clarke as the house trio and rhythm section at the Blue Note Club in Paris, where they were billed as "The Three Bosses." Needless to say, they were well equipped to provide for Dexter's needs.

OUR LOVE IS HERE TO STAY was George Gershwin's last completed song, introduced posthumously in the 1938 film "Goldwyn Follies." Our distinguished foursome takes it at an easy up-tempo, Dexter parsing the melody in his distinctive manner in the exposition, then moving into variations with a very mellow sound (he may have been experimenting with a softer reed at this date.) By the third chorus, Klook is getting with it, and things are warming up as Dex gets quotatious. Powell shows no hesitation in his two choruses, his phrases flowing with good ideas (as usual, we can hear Bud singing along with himself.) An auspicious beginning, although this track did not make it to the original album.

BROADWAY, a swing instrumental written for the Basie band by Henri Woode [composer of "Rosetta") and recorded in 1941 with a splendid Lester Young solo, starts off with Klook's hi-hat and snare stuff (like all great drummers, he has a distinctive sound.) Dexter states the theme, with Michelot's solid walk behind him, and then invents through six choruses; in the third, he quotes from his famous 'The Chase," then trots out some modal things. The way he clinches his fourth and fifth chorus is worth noting, and Klook certainly hears it, commenting approvingly, Dynamic contrasts are a feature of that fifth chorus, and in the next, Dexter encounters and gives chase to a stronger from paradise. Bud is unmistakably himself in his two-chorus solo, launching some strikingly percussive phrases. Dexter picks up on the last of these and then trades educated eights with the drummer, makes up a riff, restates the theme, and plays tag with Bud's echoes of Basie. Bud could still play happy music!

STAIRWAY TO THE STARS was originally an instrumental piece by Matty Malneck and Frank Signorelli, introduced in 1935 by Paul Whiteman as "Park Avenue Fantasy." Mitchell Parrish put words to it in 1939, and young Ella Fitzgerald made a memorable recording. After Bud's intro, Dexter makes love to the melody with an enveloping sound, adding some wry asides to remind us that, like all great artists, he remains the unmoved mover. Using the full range of the horn, he once again almost sings the last eight bars of the exposition, then launches seamlessly into variations that truly merit the often misused term "improvisation;" there's abstract thinking involved here. Bud uses space imaginatively in his 16 bars and Dexter returns with the bridge, building to an impassioned climax. Saxophone mastery!

A NIGHT IN TUNISIA opens with the "traditional" introduction, and Dexter

launches Dizzy's theme with a mixture of 4/4 and Latin from the rhythm section. The standard interlude and break follow, Dexter hoisting himself into his solo with some modal turns. Moving along like a jet-propelled steamroller, he uncorks a bit of "Summertime," some Coltrane licks, near-Eastern phrases, and some "freak" horn effects. By the third chorus, he's in the upper ranges and makes forceful use of repeated phrases. A recapitulation of the interlude sets up Bud's break — a terrific one — and a solo that hints at his affinity for Monk. Klook solos next, before a great recap of the theme and high-note cadenza. A great version of this oft-recorded jazz standard.

WILLOW WEEP FOR ME, Ann Ronnell's 1932 gem, was written while she was romantically involved with George Gershwin and makes wonderful use of one of his trademarks—the repeated note. Our men in Paris take it at a slightly brighter tempo than usually applied to this blues-ballad, opening with an arranged riff. Dexter soon turns to paraphrase, with an uncommon buzzy edge on his tone, and then just lets the ideas flow, with marvelous continuity and logic; it may have been Paris that made him think of "Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup," and the Seine that brought "Ol' Man River" to his mind. Bud, to no great surprise, proves himself a great blues player. Michelot's solo spot shows off his fine sound and articulation (no piano fills behind him.) Dexter returns with a transformed bridge, brief theme recap, and the opening riff, perfect for fading.

SCRAPPLE FROM THE APPLE, Charlie Parker's contrafact of "Honeysuckle Rose," with an ad-lib bridge based on rhythm changes, opens with the standard introduction, then takes off at a fine clip — Michelot is a great time keeper. By his second chorus, Dexter creates a riff, repeats it, transposes it, kneads it; by the third, he's floating, by the fourth, he's smoking. The fifth highlights continuity, with some Prez stuff added; on the sixth, he has fun answering himself; on the seventh, Prez returns, with Sonny Rollins in tow; by the eighth, he's swinging like crazy, and on the ninth, he's riffing away, mixing in some modal stuff, and fashions a bridge to end all bridges—what a ride!!! One doesn't envy Bud, having to follow this eruption, but he shows that he can still handle a challenging tempo, if not quite like once upon a time, and that Bird-like left hand sparkles in the second chorus. (Let's not forget Bud's comping throughout the session.) A chorus of tenor and drum exchanges follows, with Klook in fine fettle, and we end traditionally.

This session closed with a trio version of LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE, which can be heard on Bud Powell's own Blue Note boxed set.