AMG Review of Complete Prestige Recordings

Thom Jurek
All Music Guide

While it's unquestionably true that saxophonist Dexter Gordon is best known for his Blue Note sides made between 1960 and 1965, it is on his Prestige recordings, the vast majority of which were taped between 1969 and 1973, where the full depth and breadth of his gift and contribution are documented. What's more, this box finally sets the historical and chronological record straight as many of Gordon's records were assembled from various sessions. The Complete Prestige Recordings consists of 11 CDs, charting Gordon's rise as a soloist in 1950 as part of the With Wardell Gray memorial album, and his reemergence after a period of drug addiction and imprisonment in 1960 with the album Resurgence. The story drops again as Gordon went on to record his seminal Blue Note sessions and picks up again with Booker Ervin, Jaki Byard, Reggie Workman and Alan Dawson on the electrifying Setting the Pace five years later. Gordon moved to Europe following this date for an extended sojourn there, and isn't heard from again until 1969's Tower of Power and More Power, two albums' worth of material recorded while visiting New York, with Barry Harris, Albert "Tootie" Heath, James Moody and Buster Williams. From these sessions, there are six previously unissued takes of the material in addition to the albums themselves. From 1969 until '73 Gordon's is featured in all sorts of settings, from quartets with Junior Mance, Martin Rivera and Oliver Jackson, as well as with Larry Ridley, Tommy Flanagan and Alan Dawson, to a quintet co-led with Gene Ammons that starred a young Steve McCall on drums! There is also the fine Jumpin' Blues session with Wynton Kelly, Sam Jones and Roy Brooks, as well as a gorgeous quintet with Freddie Hubbard, Cedar Walton, Billy Higgins and Buster Williams that was issued first as Tangerine and then as Generation. The ~Montreux performances are included here as well. From the quartets with Hampton Hawes, Kenny Clarke and Bob Cranshaw, to the steaming Gene Ammons and friends jam at ~Montreux with that trio, plus Ammons, Nat and Cannonball Adderley and Kenny Nash in addition to Dex. There are no less than eight unreleased performances from these various outings making for a wealth of previously unavailable Gordon in this box. What it adds up to is one of jazz music's most compelling and labyrinthine stories. One of an expatriate jazzman whose style was moving ever more expressionistically into new expansive harmonic and lyric conceptions informed by a tough, swaggering swinging application of the blues. The sound is phenomenal, the track by track documentation is a bit idiosyncratic in description but is nonetheless complete. There are also many fine and rare photographs, and the liner essay by Ted Panken is both exhaustive and authoritative. This set is long overdue and, combined with the Blue Note box, this gives for all practical and intent purposes, the definitive portrait of Gordon.