BLP 4077

Dexter Gordon - Doin' Allright

Released - October 1961

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, May 6, 1961
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Dexter Gordon, tenor sax; Horace Parlan, piano; George Tucker, bass; Al Harewood, drums.

tk.5 I Was Doing All Right
tk.12 You've Changed
tk.13 Society Red
tk.20 It's You Or No One
tk.21 For Regulars Only

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
I Was Doing All Right	George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin	06 May 1961
You've Changed	Bill Carey, Carl T. Fischer	06 May 1961
For Regulars Only	Dexter Gordon	06 May 1961
Side Two
Society Red	Dexter Gordon	06 May 1961
It's You or No One	Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne	06 May 1961

Liner Notes

DEXTER GORDON — there is a name to conjure with. Veteran listeners will certainly remember him but younger fans probably will not although he was intermittently active during the ’50s. To musicians (especially those saxophonists who have been directly or indirectly influenced by him), Dexter Gordon has always been a highly important player. As the first man to synthesize the Young, Hawkins and Parker strains in translating the bop idiom to the tenor saxophone, he was an important contributor. It is not, however, from a stylistic, historical angle that he has been appreciated. Dexter has always been a direct, exciting communicator of emotions; his big sound and declarative attack are as commanding of attention as his imposing height.

The owner of an acute harmonic sense, Gordon has never used it to merely run changes accurately. He is a melodist and can also contrast rhythmic figures effectively. His harmonic awareness was a great aid in preparing him to plunge into the new music that was fermenting in the early ’40s. Unlike many of his immediate contemporaries, Gordon studied harmony and theory at the age of 13, the same time he took up the clarinet. Due to this, he was able to actively incorporate the beneficial effects directly into his playing as he was growing up. At 15, he started playing alto sax and two years later, in 1940, he quit school, switched to tenor sax and joined the “Harlem Collegians” in his native Los Angeles. From this local band he stepped into Lionel Hampton’s aggregation in December 1940 and remained with Hamp through 1943. Illinois Jacquet was the principal tenorman and together they were featured on Po’k Chops. “It was about the only thing I had to play,” says Dexter.

After leaving Hampton, he returned to Los Angeles where he played with the groups of Lee Young (Lester Young’s drumming brother) and Jesse Price. For six months in 1944, Dexter worked with Louis Armstrong’s band. Then he joined Billy Eckstine’s new orchestra and received a real chance to be heard; the tenor battle with Gene Ammons on Blowin’ the Blues Away; his own bits on Lonesome Lover Blues and several of the modern jazz instrumentals that the band played.

Gordons’ impact was immediate. You could hear it in the work of his section-mate, Ammons. When he left Eckstine for New York’s 52nd Street in 1945, his influence spread like the ripples a large rock makes when it is dropped in a pool of water. Allen Eager’s first quartet recordings (Booby Hatch, Rampage) showed that he was listening and Stan Getz was captured temporarily according to such sides as Opus de Bop and Running Water. Of course, like Gordon, these players had been affected by Lester Young, but it seemed that in addition to getting inspiration directly from Pres, they were digging the Gordon translation, too. If a 12-inch, Mercury 78 rpm of Rosetta and I’ve Found a New Baby, cut with Harry Edison, demonstrated that Dexter could get very close to Young, the original version of Groovin’ High, made with Dizzy Gillespie for Guild in February of 1945, showed a Gordon who had his own interpretation of the day’s material.

Gordon worked at the Spotlite Club with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Bud Powell and then had his own group at the Three Deuces. The weekly Sunday afternoon sessions at the Fraternal Clubhouse and Lincoln Square Center usually included Dex as part of their all-star line-ups. His presence, before he even blew a note, always had an electric effort on the audience.

Gordon returned to the West Coast in the summer of 1946 but not before he had made several recordings with his own groups. He played for two months in Hawaii with Cee Pee Johnson. Then, in California, in the summer of 1947, he and Wardell Gray teamed up at concerts, after-hours sessions and for their recording of The Chase. Later that year, it was back to New York and 52nd Street for Gordon but in 1948, he went home again, not to return to Manhattan until the May 1961 trip to record for Blue Note. He revived his association with Gray in 1950 but that soon ended and the next decade was not a very productive one for Dexter. The popularity of “West Coast” jazz left little opportunity for his brand of virile music to be heard in Southern California. Then, too, he was fighting personal demons. In the last five years of the ’50s, he made only three record dates (two as leader) and worked sporadically in a small group context.

The ’60s are a decade of new promise for Gordon. Through playwright Carl Thaler, he became involved in the West Coast version of Jack Gelber’s The Connection. He composed an original score, led the quartet that played it on stage andheld down a main speaking role. His success gavehim a new confidence and led to a general revitalization.

Although his presence has not been directly felt on the jazz scene as a whole in a long time, Dexter has been with us, in part, through the work of John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, two of the most important instrumentalists to develop in the ’50s. Both owe a debt to Gordon for helping them to form their now highly personal styles. It is interesting to hear how Gordon, in turn, has now picked up on developments brought about by the men he originally influenced. Make no mistake, however, about Dexter. He is still very much his own man. His great inner power stands out in these recordings. He breathes maturity in every phrase he plays, his gigantic sound living up to the kind of musical voice one would expect from a person of his god-like dimensions.

A musician of Gordon’s reputation (particularly in the special setting of this recording), playing at the top of his game, will always inspire the men around him to do their best. Here, young Freddie Hubbard, impressive as he has been on Blue Note in the past, adds new, thoughtful qualities to his brassy fire. That this was no ordinary date is evident in every microgroove.

The rhythm sections plays for Dexter, seeming to sense what he wants, flowing his lead yet never lagging. These three are no strangers to Blue Noters. As the Horace Parlan trio or as 3/5 of the Horace Parlan quintet (with the Turrentine brothers as the horns), they have made several swinging LPs. Presently, they are appearing around New York with tenorman Booker Ervin under the title, The Playhouse Four.

George Gershwin’s I Was Doing All Right, the opener and title tune, is stated in a full-toned manner by Gordon at a loping medium tempo. He eases into his unhurried solo with a couple of bows to his old buddy Wardell Gray. Logic, warmth and melody abound. Hubbard plays beautifully and pensively, putting one in mind of Clifford Brown and some of Miles Davis’ early ’50s thinking. Parlan picks up the mood and spins out his solo in an equally relaxed, thoughtful way, ending with some perfumed chords. The way he handles a ballad is one good indicator of a musician’s depth. Dexter’s You’ve Changed is a gorgeous piece of meaningful horn-singing by a man who knows what it’s all about. Some of the lower register tones remind me of Don Byas, another old Gordon colleague (52nd Street vintage) who influenced quite a few people himself. The upper register and the story told are unmistakably Gordon. Hubbard is inspired again to play a poignant albeit short bit. Parlan’s even shorter interlude leads back to Gordon’s tender conclusion. Billie Holiday couldn’t have done it any better herself.

For Regulars Only is a Gordon original with a catchy, contrasting theme. Dexter masterfully demonstrates how to build a solo, climbing up the thermometer, chorus after chorus, until his last one satisfies completely. Hubbard cooks in a brief solo; Parlan alternates his stint between single-line and chords.

A marching, skippy, funky blues is Gordon’s Society Red. It settles into a stead 4/4 as Hubbard takes an opening solo that heats things up with leaping rhythmic figures and a brightly burning flame of a sound. Again, Gordon builds to a point of climax. Here he does it more slowly than in For Regulars Only, spreading his expansive tone over a longer period of time. Parlan’s single-line leads into a blue chordal exploration before George Tucker plucks his only lengthy solo of the set.

It’s You or No One finds Dexter ascending to the upper reaches of his horn, alternating swift flights with rhythmic punching. Freddie is fleet but with underlying substance. After Horace’s solo, Tucker walks and Harewood talks as they weave in and out of the ensemble.

All in all, Dexter Gordon’s trip to New York was very fruitful. He renewed old acquaintance, made some new friends, bought a couple of groovy suits at a Broadway clothier and began an association with Blue Note that should prove to be mutually significant.

Dexter Gordon is a big man physically and musically. This album is representative of that kind of size.

-IRA GITLER

Photos by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT DOIN' ALLRIGHT

Two triumphant returns to New City punctuated the extraordinary career of Dexter Gordon. The second, which took place in the mid-'70s after more than a decade's residence in Europe, found the saxophonist greeted by wide public acclaim and credited with rescuing jazz music from one of its frequent economic slumps. There was far less ballyhoo 15 years earlier, when Gordon arrived from his native Los Angeles to begin a four-year association with Blue Note Records that was every bit as significant as Ira Gitler predicted in his original liner notes.

The '50s were a sad decade for Gordon, due as much to the "personal demons" Gitler mentions as to any changes in musical taste. Incarcerated for possession of heroin on than one occasion, Gordon drew as much attention for his role in the film Unchained, shot at the Chino correctional facility, as he did for his 1955 recordings under his own name and with Stan Levey. (While Gordon is seen with his horn in Unchained, it is George Auld's tenor that is heard on the soundtrack.) To judge from those sessions, however, Gordon remained a commanding and endlessly inventive instrumentalist, thanks in part to his ability to continue playing while in prison.

By 1960, Gordon was back in circulation but facing limited prospects. There was little work for black jazz musicians in California, while his criminal record made it impossible to obtain the cabaret card that was essential for nightclub appearances in New York at the time. While his appearance for nearly a year in the Los Angeles production of The Connection was an important break, it was the willingness of Alfred Lion to sign Gordon and the string of excellent albums that followed that ultimately brought the saxophonist back into the center of the jazz world's consciousness.

A letter that Lion wrote to Gordon on April 26, 1961 indicates that the producer had very clear ideas regarding both the present session and the one three days later that produced the album Dexter Calling. Scheduling conflicts led to at least one adjustment (the first album had been planned as a quartet date, with Freddie Hubbard proposed to appear on the second), but Lion's vision of the material to be recorded required no amendment. "I don't want any complicated music," he wrote, "but rather some good standards in medium, medium-bright, and medium-bounce tempos... some blues... A slow, walking ballad ... I'd rather emphasize a good standard, played in the right tempo and delivered in a soulful manner, moreso [sic] than displaying a lot of technique. I'd like to make something that can be enjoyed and played on jukeboxes stationed in the soul spots throughout the nation...Bring along as much material, including your originals, as you can; and dig into your bag of standards that lay well with you."

Gordon responded as per Lion's instructions, with a slew of new material and standards that had not been done to death. While the focus was on originals for the second date, including a remake of "l Want More" that left the present version unissued until Doin 'Allright first appeared on compact disc, the balance here shifted to quality pop songs. Not only are the tempos perfect, but through such touches as the introductory vamp on the title track and a bagpipe effect that suggests amending the Styne/Kahn standard to read "Fitzhugh or No One," Gordon makes these songs thoroughly his own. The choice of "You've Changed" as a ballad feature was the first of many nods to Billie Holiday by Gordon on Blue Note.

The originals display Gordon's knack for direct, unaffected melody and, in the case of "I Want More" (from his Connection score) and "For Regulars Only," inspiring chord changes. "Society Red" is the blues, and an example of one of Gordon's greatest strengths — the ability to stretch out at length while maintaining focus. It became a signature tune, especially after Gordon and Hubbard reprised it in the movie 'Round Midnight. There were other collaborations by the two hornmen between this album and Bertrand Tavernier's film, including Herbie Hancock's debut as a leader, Takin'Off, and a 1965 Gordon session that appeared in the late '70s as Clubhouse.

Doin' Allright did not lend the immediate boost to Gordon's career that followed upon his 1976 homecoming from Europe. There was perhaps too much focus on innovative sounds and ideas in the jazz world, together with the notion that one could not honor the established while celebrating the new. But a great saxophonist had clearly emerged from a traumatic period, not just unscathed, but sounding better than ever. More great Dexter Gordon music was on the horizon, and for the next — even after his expatriation to Europe — it would be documented by Blue Note.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2003