He navigates the sweet changes of Tadd Dameron’s “Lady Bird” with swinging lusciousness; at Schlitten’s instigation, the tenors juxtapose Dameron’s melody with “Half Nelson,” a Miles Davis variant that the trumpeter recorded on his first leader session, in 1947, with Charlie Parker on tenor saxophone. Gordon had interpolated the climactic coda of Tadd Dameron’s “If You Could See Me Now” in both his recorded codas of “Body and Soul. B4 ("(Can't Get My) Head Around You", "A Lot Like Me", "A Thousand Days", "All Along", "Amazed", "Americana", "Amino Man", " Army of One", "Beheaded", "Breaking These Bones", "Burn It Up", "Come Out and Play", "Come Out Swinging", "Coming for You", "Cruising California (Bumpin' In My Trunk)", "D. Gordon shares the front line with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, then under contract to CTI, as he had done on his Blue Note debut, Doin’ Allright, and 1965’s Landslide. Few jazz musicians have stamped the vocabulary of their instrument so definitively at such a tender age as Dexter Keith Gordon, who was not yet 22 when he recorded that iconic tenor battle with Gene Ammons.

When he resurfaced with Blue Note in the early Sixties, he was already playing with heavier articulation and swaggering swing, and more so by the late Sixties. In honor of Blue Note Records’ 80th Anniversary, the legendary Jazz label is launching the Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl Reissue Series. The very best scented oils are used in producing this high-quality product, crafted from a mix of organic and vegan-friendly traditional ingredients. Now we can hear the music in sequence, beginning with two quartets by Gordon and the afternoon rhythm section—idiosyncratic swing-to-bop pianist John Young (b.Blue Note President Don Was brought in “Tone Poet” Joe Harley—co-founder and co-producer of the acclaimed Music Matters audiophile vinyl series—to produce this new. These included a May 4th engagement at Baltimore’s Left Bank Jazz Society with a strong pickup group featuring pianist Bobby Timmons (1935-1974). Here he draws on bop and blues roots, playing with great imagination, intensity, and finesse on a hopelessly out-of-tune piano.

Both bopwalk eloquently on two takes of “Boston Bernie,” a Gordon variant on the 1939 Jerome Kern song “All the Things You Are” (from the musical Very Warm for May) and on “Fried Bananas,” Gordon’s ingenious up tempo version of “It Could Happen to You,” by Rodgers and Hart. Though he’s a bit low in the mix, Higgins’s buoyant ride cymbal and subtle touch propels the soloists through the master take of “Milestones,” a John Lewis line for which Miles Davis took credit on his 1947 Savoy debut with Charlie Parker on tenor.S. on an occasional basis, recording in 1965, 1969-1970, and 1972, but he was to an extent forgotten in his native land. Over the next four years, he did several tours on a circuit that took him from Western Canada to his native Los Angeles. Still functioning at a peak of physical prowess, he kept the fierce attack, deep swing, and populist imperatives of the Blue Note years, while internalizing the developments of the preceding decade. Shortly after his first jail stay, Gordon penned “Stanley the Steamer” for a 1955 Bethlehem date led by West Coast bop drummer Stan Levey.