100 Years of Dexter Gordon

by Zachary Vanderslice

This February 27th would have been saxophonist Dexter Gordon’s 100th birthday, the centennial of one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century. At six-and-a-half feet tall, Gordon was called the “Sophisticated Giant” and “Long Tall Dexter,” but his music commanded an even more powerful presence.

Born in Los Angeles in 1923 to a well-to-do family (his father had attended Howard University Medical School), Gordon began playing clarinet at 13 under the instruction of New Orleanian John Sturdevant. Before he joined the school band, he played with the neighborhood kids, who accompanied his professionallymade instrument with washtubs and pie pans. Gordon attended Thomas Jefferson High School, which produced an astounding quantity of jazz talent: Lionel Hampton and Count Basie sideman Marshall Royal was there the decade prior, and after graduation Gordon’s chair would be filled by the likes of Sonny Criss and Big Jay McNeely. At Jefferson, Gordon began jamming with classmates Chico Hamilton and Buddy Collette, both of whom went on to have impressive careers of their own.

During this time, Gordon switched from clarinet to alto sax, but slid down to tenor, the instrument with which he would make his name soon after. He joined Royal in Lionel Hampton’s band in 1940, along with Illinois Jacquet, and worked as a sideman with the likes of Louis Armstrong, Tadd Dameron, and Billy Eckstine, among others. He went to New York in 1945, recording as a leader for Savoy and continuing sideman work before going back west. Of special note from this time are his recordings with fellow saxophonist Wardell Gray, which captured the two tenor-men’s incandescent duels around Los Angeles.

Gordon’s second decade as a professional musician was less fruitful than the first. He continued to record, but at a lesser pace, struggling with heroin addiction and being incarcerated several times. Clean by the early 1960s, he returned to New York and resumed his career with Blue Note. However, after only a short stint in the Big Apple he moved to Europe, a common decision for jazz musicians of his generation at this time, such as Bud Powell, with whom he recorded upon arrival.

In Copenhagen and Paris, he found partial refuge from American racism, as well a musical culture less driven by commercial motivations. It was in this period that he recorded a personal favorite of the author’s, Gettin’ Around, a strong example of his marvelous tone and improvisational technique. The album was one of six he recorded with the great pianist Barry Harris. He returned to New York after fourteen years abroad and recorded Biting the Apple in 1976 and the live album Homecoming in 1977.

Gordon continued to record significantly as the years continued, but as a life’s worth of smoking began to take its toll, his musical output decreased. In 1986 he starred in Bertrand Travernier’s jazz film Round Midnight as an American jazz musician living in Paris; which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Later that year, he was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master title. Gordon passed in 1990 at the age of 67. His music, however, stays with us, and it is with great reverence and admiration that KCR presents the music of the “Sophisticated Giant”.