Four Classic Albums (Doin' Allright / Dexter Calling / Go / A Swingin' Affair)

Dexter Gordon really did have quite an extraordinarily prolific career starting from a very early age when he began learning the clarinet at 13 before switching to the alto and then tenor sax at 15. His career could be said to pretty much span the great jazz decades from the 1940's to the 1970's with the most important time being the 1940's to the 1960's when he made his great comeback. The list of great jazz artists he played with reads like a veritable who's who of the jazz world from the 1940's and onwards. The following is just a few names he has played with, while still at school he was playing in the Chico Hamilton and Buddy Collette bands. Then we see him joining the Lionel Hampton, Fletcher Henderson, Louis Armstrong and Billy Eckstine bands. Not forgetting Nat Cole, Dizzy, Bird, Wardell Gray (the famous duets period), Harry "Sweets" Edison, Benny Carter, Ben Webster, Gerry Mulligan and Tadd Dameron to name only a few more! The 1950's saw Dexter in and out of prison for mainly drug related problems but he did manage to continue playing and even tried his hand at the West Coast Cool School of playing. However he was primarily a be-bopist and the 1960's saw his great comeback when he signed for Blue Note in 1961. His time on the West Coast had also given him time to listen to the new modal and hard bop styles of two guys he had himself previously influenced, namely Coltrane and Sonny Rollins.