BLP 4204

Dexter Gordon - Gettin' Around

Released - August 1966

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, May 28, 1965
Dexter Gordon, tenor sax; Bobby Hutcherson, vibes; Barry Harris, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.

1592 tk.4 Le Coiffeur
1593 tk.11 Manha De Carnaval
1594 tk.28 Everybody Somebody's Fool

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, May 29, 1965
Dexter Gordon, tenor sax; Bobby Hutcherson, vibes; Barry Harris, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.

1595 tk.10 Shiny Stockings
1596 tk.15 Who Can I Turn To
1597 tk.17 Heartaches

Session Photos

Alfred Lion and Dexter Gordon

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Manhã de Carnaval	Luiz Bonfá, Antonio Maria	May 28 1965
Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me)	Leslie Bricusse, Anthony Newley	May 29 1965
Heartaches	Al Hoffman, John Klenner	May 29 1965
Side Two
Shiny Stockings	Frank Foster	May 29 1965
Everybody's Somebody's Fool	Howard Greenfield, Jack Keller	May 29 1965
Le Coiffeur	Dexter Gordon	May 28 1965

Liner Notes

Since 1962 Dexter Gordon has been living in Europe. He has played all over the Continent but his European home has been Copenhagen, and that city’s Club Montmartre his main base of operations. We in the United States have not lost contact with him, however, for several reasons. There have been Blue Note albums like Our Man in Paris (4146) and One Flight Up (4176), recorded overseas but released internationally. Then each year at Christmas, Dexter sends his friends unique, personal holiday greetings. Last year’s read, "Santa says, 'Make Glad The Heart’ "; the 1965 message was "Santa says: ’Spreading joy in the neighbourhood is easy to do and it feels so good.’ " Somehow you get the idea that Santa in this case is really Dex himself. The feeling that his playing imparts certainly is substantiating evidence.

At the end of 1964 Gordon visited the United States, played engagements on both coasts and in Chicago, and before returning to Europe in June 1965, left us with an LP that makes "glad the heart" and helps to "spread ioy in the neighbourhood." He is supported by vibist Bobby Hutcherson, pianist Barry Harris, bassist Bob Cranshaw and drummer Billy Higgins. Support is quite the right word for although Hutcherson and Harris contribute solos, Gordon is the main man here. The others’ solos are the condiments for Dex’s longer, meatier statements.

Side 1 is made up of two fairly recent popular songs and one tune that goes back quite a bit farther. Gordon’s version of Luiz Bonfa’s Manha de Carnaval (Morning of the Carnival) from Black Orpheus is a bit slower than this bossa nova is usually played. Dex’s sensual, expansive sound and languorous delivery immediately create a cloud to sink into and float on. Talk about being relaxed.

Gordon caresses Anthony Newley’s Who Can I Turn To (not to be confused with Alec Wilder’s song of the same title) as if he is holding a beautiful woman in his arms. His interplay with Hutcherson after Bobby picks up the melody statement is particularly moving.

On the old hit that Ted Weems made famous, Heartaches, Dexter demonstrates how a great professional can insinuate a whole feeling just in the way he states the melody. He prepares you in definite but subtle ways for the harder swinging that is to come. The tempo is not that fast but Gordon can generate power at any speed. Hutcherson, showing his earlier Milt Jackson influence, and Harris have short but sweet solos before Dex returns with a clever quasi-quote from Deep In The Heart Of Texas — he has wit to match his heart — and brings everything to a climax with a dancing, delayed ending. Where Elmo Tanner whistled with Weems, Gordon wails with urbane heat.

Side 2 opens with an original by another fine contemporary tenor saxophonist, Frank Foster. While he was a member of the Count Basie orchestra Foster wrote Shiny Stockings and it has become a favorite of many modern musicians. (Pianist Jaki Byard uses it as his theme song.) The groove is an easy-swinging one here with Gordon, Hutcherson and Harris taking a chorus apiece, Dexter doing a reprise, and then out. There is absolutely no strain either in the playing or the listening.

Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool is a "blues ballad” popularized by the first name band that Gordon ever warked with — Lionel Hampton — although it was first recorded in 1949, several years after he had left Hamp. Gordon strikes a wistful, late-hour mood, again bringing his beautiful tone into full play. Harris contributes an appropriately dreamy interlude. When he returns, Dexter makes a reference to Don’t Explain — perhaps by design, or by accident.

Dexter’s only written contribution to the session is a light, bouncy line called Le Coiffeur (The Hairdresser). I wonder if he had someone specific in mind when he wrote this. To open his improvisation Gordon makes obvious but effective use of the written line and proceeds to employ rhythmic figures that echo the piece’s structure. This adds a sense of unity to the whole track and Hutcherson and Harris stay with the character that has been established.

I think it is evident that the supporting cast was with Dexter all the way in this album. He set the tone and they fell right in with him. Since he is an expatriate it is not often that the New York-based musicians receive a chance to play in his company. Gordon’s charm and musical inspiration make his company both delightful and stimulating. With albums such as this Santa Dex is able to disseminate his Christmas messages all year long.

- IRA GITLER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT GETTIN’ AROUND

The end of one phase of Dexter Gordon’s recording career and the beginning of another are marked by Gettin’ Around, although neither Gordon nor Blue Note was aware of the transition at the time. After relocating to Europe in the summer of 1962, the saxophonist had fulfilled his contractual obligations with two sessions cut at the CBS Studios in Paris under the supervision of the visiting Francis Wolff, Our Man in Jazz (1963) and One Flight Up (1964). A visit home in May 1965 presented the opportunity for the label to reunite Gordon with engineer Rudy Van Gelder and producer Alfred Lion. Three days of recordings were intended to yield two releases, although Lion rejected the results of the first day, which featured Freddie Hubbard in the chair occupied here by Bobby Hutcherson and ultimately appeared as Clubhouse in 1980. Most of the product of the more successful second and third days at Van Gelder’s made up the present album, which debuted as an LP in 1966.

Correspondence between Gordon and Wolff indicate that artist and label originally intended to continue their relationship. There is talk of a contract extension, and debate over whether the next date should be done live in Europe (Gordon’s preference) or back in Englewood Cliffs (Wolff’s). As it turned out, a combination of factors intervened — including Blue Note’s acquisition by the larger Liberty Records and problems on Gordon’s end not dissimilar to those of the character he portrayed so indelibly in the film ‘Round Midnight— and Gettin’ Around became the final chapter of an affiliation that had begun four years earlier when Gordon made one of a few significant returns to the east coast after a protracted absence.

As an example of scheduling strategy that would allow Gordon to sustain his status as a US recording artist over the next decade, however, the present album was a blueprint for the approach Prestige Records adopted when it had the saxophonist under contract in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Between holiday visits to his family in Los Angeles and the occasional festival booking in early summer, Gordon found a few chances to return home, and invariably a four- or five-piece band with sympathetic accompanists was assembled for studio encounters. The personnel and the results captured in this recording give further testimony to the spontaneous skills of both the leader and his most worthy constituents.

Barry Harris was a natural fit with Gordon, given the strengths both shared in fundamental bebop and a spectrum of standards that encompassed the hoary (“Heartaches”), the hip (the Little Jimmy Scott/Lionel Hampton opus “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool”), and the currently hot (“Manha de Carnaval,” “Who Can I Turn To?”). There was the added attraction of reuniting Harris with Bob Cranshaw and Billy Higgins, thus reconstituting the rhythm section heard on Lee Morgan’s hit “The Sidewinder.” Harris is on record as saying that Lion had turned down the pianist’s request for his own recording session on the grounds that Harris played “too beautifully,” but the producer must have sensed that the beauty would be reciprocated in this instance. His return for Gordon’s first Prestige projects, under the supervision of longtime Harris fan Don Schlitten, is less surprising.

Including Bobby Hutcherson here was a stroke of genius. Gordon knew the young vibist as his boyhood friend Teddy’s little brother, and had even served as Bobby’s babysitter, so their empathy was built on an uncommon and extremely strong foundation. Hutcherson had already proved to be one of Blue Note’s most versatile recording artists, and fit right in with the lyrical and somewhat reserved mood of the session, where tempos tended to be a bit slower than expected and the most out-and-out swinger was the bouncy “Heartaches.”

The final two tracks, omitted initially due to the space limitations of vinyl, first appeared on the initial CD reissue in 1987. “Very Saxily Yours” had been attempted and rejected on May 28th. The take heard here led off the next day’s session. Onzy Matthews’s composition is similar to “Shiny Stockings” in its vibe, and lets Hutcherson step forward on the bridge. “Flick of a Trick” is more distinctive with its open slow blues groove, but at over 10 minutes was problematic for inclusion on an LP program. Its composer, bassist Ben Tucker, sat in on the May 27th session when the quintet with Hubbard recorded another of his tunes, “Devilette.”

-Bob Blumenthal, 2005