However, the moment when you feel jazz blogging is all worthwhile is that rare occasion when you are placed into the position of the art critic asked to review the Mona Lisa.
It doesn't happen often, but, today I found myself in that position twice! I'll write about the second album later, after I've tired of the first which could be never!
I've got, and almost worn out, Dexter's Blue Note albums. I never remotely imagined I could hear him play better. It's like saying that a soccer player only scored a hat-trick or a cricketer only scored a century. Well this is is a double hat-trick and a triple century combined! I love Coltrane, Rollins, Getz et al but this is something else. Even my greatest hero, Wardell Gray, had he lived would have struggled to reach this level.
A double album vinyl beautifully laid out with comprehensible notes written on the inner sleeves make this a work of art in itself and that's before the first of the four extended tracks sent me reeling the way only the very best can hit you and as it must surely have knocked out the Danish fans at Copenhagen's Jazzhuis Montmartre back in 1967.
The four tracks range from 12 mins to 20 mins with Dexter the predominate figure although Drew, Taylor and Stief also chip in - Taylor driving it along without overpowering. No one quite built on the legacy of Lester and Bird like Dexter Gordon did - this is the Holy Grail of saxophone playing.
Listening enraptured, I wondered why I couldn't have been sitting in the front row at the legendary Copenhagen club. A check with an old diary revealed I was doing a wedding gig at the Springfield Hotel in Gateshead that day. Talk about chalk and cheese although, in this case, it was Cheese Cake which Dexter allowed us to gorge for 20 minutes and 43 seconds. Never has it tasted more delicious.
The young (and the old) pretenders may wax eloquent about the newer guys but, without Dex, there wouldn't have been any newer guys. The proof is in these two 180g pieces of vinyl issued by good old Parlophone to coincide with the latest Record Store Day - October 24.
Lance
The Squirrel; Cheese Cake; You've Changed; Sonnymoon for Two.
1 comment :
Great Review. I've had many Dexter Gordon records over the years and have come to the conclusion that no other tenor player is in his league. I was was at the Montmartre Club in Copenhagen once sitting at the front and got the full force of his huge sound. Kenny Drew on piano NHOP bass and Alex Rial drums. What a night1
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