Dexter Gordon (February 27, 1923 – April 25, 1990) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. He was among the most influential early bebop musicians. Gordon's height was , so he was also known as "Long Tall Dexter" and "Sophisticated Giant". His studio and performance career spanned more than 40 years.
Gordon's sound was commonly characterized as being "large" and spacious and he had a tendency to play behind the beat. He inserted musical quotes into his solos, with sources as diverse as "Happy Birthday" and well-known melodies from the operas of Wagner. Quoting from various musical sources is not unusual in jazz improvisation, but Gordon did it frequently enough to make it a hallmark of his style. One of his major influences was Lester Young. Rollins and Coltrane then influenced Gordon's playing as he explored hard bop and modal playing during the 1960s.
Gordon had a genial and humorous stage presence. He was an advocate of playing to communicate with the audience, which was his musical approach as well. One of his idiosyncratic rituals was to recite lyrics from each ballad before playing it. In an interview pianist Dave Bass recalled, "Dexter would get up to the microphone, holding his horn horizontally, and he'd say 'You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.' It was a little bit of a shtick, but it was how he approached a song, and I remember that."
A photograph by Herman Leonard of Gordon taking a smoke break at the Royal Roost in 1948 is one of the iconic images in jazz photography. Cigarettes were a recurring theme on covers of Gordon's albums.
Gordon was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in the Bertrand Tavernier film Round Midnight (Warner Bros, 1986), becoming the first Jazz musician to do so. He won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Performance, for the soundtrack album The Other Side of Round Midnight (Blue Note Records, 1986). He also had a cameo role in the 1990 film Awakenings. In 2018, Gordon's album Go (Blue Note, 1962) was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Early life and education
Dexter Keith Gordon was born on February 27, 1923, in Los Angeles, California. His father, Frank Gordon, one of the first African-American medical doctors in Los Angeles, arrived in 1918 after graduating from Howard University Medical School in Washington, D.C. Among his patients were Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton. Dexter's mother, Gwendolyn Baker, was the daughter of Captain Edward Lee Baker, Jr. one of the five African-American Medal of Honor recipients in the Spanish–American War.
Gordon began his study of music with the clarinet at the age of 13, then switched to the alto saxophone at 15, and finally to the tenor saxophone at 17. While still at school, he played in bands with such contemporaries as Chico Hamilton and Buddy Collette.
In 1942, Gordon was drafted into the U.S. Army following America's entry in the Second World War. He was assigned to the Signal Corps for two years and was stationed in North Africa, where he served as a radio operator and played trumpet in a military band. Between December 1940 and 1943, Gordon was a member of Lionel Hampton's band, While in Copenhagen, Gordon and Drew's trio appeared onscreen in Ole Ege's theatrically released hardcore pornographic film Pornografi – en musical (1971), for which they composed and performed the score.
He switched from Blue Note to Prestige Records (1965–73). For the label, he recorded bop albums like The Tower of Power! and More Power! (1969) with James Moody, Barry Harris, Buster Williams, and Albert "Tootie" Heath; The Panther! (1970) with Tommy Flanagan, Larry Ridley, and Alan Dawson; The Jumpin' Blues (1970) with Wynton Kelly, Sam Jones, and Roy Brooks; The Chase! (1970) with Gene Ammons, Jodie Christian, John Young, Cleveland Eaton, Rufus Reid, Wilbur Campbell, Steve McCall, and Vi Redd; and Tangerine (1972) with Thad Jones, Freddie Hubbard, and Hank Jones. Some of the Prestige albums were recorded during visits back to North America while he was still living in Europe; others were made in Europe, including live sets from the Montreux Jazz Festival.
In addition to the recordings Gordon did under his American label contracts, live recordings by European labels and live video from his European period have been released. In 1975, Dexter Gordon signed an exclusive recording contract with Danish label SteepleChase, for which he recorded some of his most inspired sessions including The Apartment (1974), More Than You Know (1975), Stable Mable, Swiss Nights Vol. 1, 2 and 3, Something Different, Lullaby for a Monster, and not least Biting the Apple (1976), recorded during his homecoming trip to New York, featuring Barry Harris, Sam Jones and Al Foster. The album received the Grand Prix De Jazz in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977. SteepleChase released live dates from his mid-1960s tenure at the Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen. The video was released in the Jazz Icons series.
Homecoming
thumb|At the 1980 [[Edison Award, Amsterdam]]
Gordon returned to the United States for good in 1976. He appeared with Woody Shaw, Ronnie Mathews, Stafford James, and Louis Hayes, for a gig at the Village Vanguard in New York that was dubbed his "homecoming." It was recorded and released by Columbia Records under that title. He observed: "There was so much love and elation; sometimes it was a little eerie at the Vanguard. After the last set they'd turn on the lights and nobody would move." In addition to the Homecoming album, a series of live albums was released by Blue Note from his stands at Keystone Korner in San Francisco during 1978 and 1979. They featured Gordon, George Cables, Rufus Reid, and Eddie Gladden. He recorded the studio albums Sophisticated Giant with an eleven-piece big band in 1977 and Manhattan Symphonie with the Live at Keystone Corner crew in 1978. The sensation of Gordon's return, and the continued efforts of Art Blakey through 1970s and early 1980s, have been credited with reviving interest in swinging, melodic, acoustically-based classic jazz sounds after the Fusion jazz era that saw an emphasis on electronic sounds and contemporary pop influences.
Musician Emeritus
left|thumb|Dexter Gordon at Mountain Winery Jazz Festival, Saratoga, California, 1981
In 1978 and 1980, Gordon was the DownBeat Musician of the Year, and in 1980 he was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame. The US Government honored him with a Congressional Commendation, a Dexter Gordon Day in Washington DC, and in 1986 the National Endowment for the Arts named him a NEA Jazz Master in recognition of his Lifetime Achievement. In 1986, he was named a member and officer of the French Order of Arts and Letters (Officier des Arts et Lettres) by the Ministry of Culture in France.
During the 1980s, Gordon, a life-long smoker, was weakened by emphysema. He remained a popular attraction at concerts and festivals, although his live appearances and recording dates would soon become infrequent.
Gordon starred in the 1986 movie Round Midnight as "Dale Turner", an expatriate jazz musician in Paris during the late 1950s based loosely on Lester Young and Bud Powell.
Family
Gordon's maternal grandfather was Captain Edward L. Baker Jr., who received the Medal of Honor during the Spanish–American War, while serving with the 10th Cavalry Regiment (also known as the Buffalo Soldiers).
Gordon's father, Dr. Frank Gordon, M.D., was one of the first prominent African-American physicians and a graduate of Howard University.
Gordon's uncle, Clifford Myota Gordon, was a charter member of the Alpha Delta chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, seated at the University of Southern California.
When he lived in Denmark, Gordon became friends with the family of future Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich and subsequently became Lars's godfather.
Gordon was married three times and had six children: Robin, James, Deirdre, Mikael, Morten and Benjamin.
Instruments and mouthpieces
The earliest photographs of Gordon as a player show him with a Conn 30M "Connqueror" and an Otto Link mouthpiece. Later he adopted the standard Conn tenor, the 10M. In a 1962 interview with the British journalist Les Tomkins, he did not refer to the specific model of mouthpiece but stated that it was made for him personally. He stated that it was stolen around 1952.