Dexter Gordon
Our Man In Paris

The Sophisticated Giant: what better definition for the tall, slender, and elegant tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon. A wonderful and fundamental figure in jazz, a magnificent embodiment of inspiration, genius, and style, as well as the most complete catalogue of excesses and recklessness, the omnipresent thorny crown of his art.
Dex was one of the most influential jazzmen starting from the 1940s, thanks to a unique and immediately recognizable sound, full and spacious (characteristics partly due to his uncommon height), an admirable synthesis between the style of Lester Young and that of Coleman Hawkins, without too much derivation from the Parkerian totem. His style, sometimes dry and rough, sometimes sinuous and enveloping, with the characteristic tendency to play lay back, always behind the time, established itself as a model of class and virtuosity that, though less revolutionary compared to the paths of Parker or Coltrane, did not fail to influence several generations of tenor saxophonists up to the present day.

Gordon, raised in the Los Angeles middle class, quickly took his first steps on the American scene, establishing a series of excellent collaborations with artists such as Lionel Hampton, Tadd Dameron, Charles Mingus, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker. We are in the early 1950s when he begins to spiral into the perverse vortex of drug and alcohol dependency, a plague he could never free himself from. In 1962 he receives an invitation to play at the European temple of jazz, the Ronnie Scott's Club in London. The triumphant reception he receives from the Old Continent excites him to the point of inducing a prolonged stay of no less than 15 years, spent playing and living mainly between Paris and Copenhagen, and recording albums practically as an "expatriate." It is from the Parisian period of the '60s that a handful of exceptional albums emerge, all for Blue Note ("Doin' Allright," "Dexter Calling," the celebrated "Go," "A Swingin' Affair," "One Flight Up," "Gettin' Around," and in particular, "Our Man In Paris"), which today are undeniably considered his masterpieces.

This "Our Man In Paris," which contends with "Go" for the top spot in Dex's artistic arc, represents the typical cliché of the announced potential disaster that transforms, by the intercession of some syncopated deity, into a magical event, one of the most extraordinary performances that Blue Note can still count in its renowned catalog. The recording, originally scheduled for an album of new compositions by Gordon, gets blocked before it even starts, due to the sudden forfeit of the pianist Kenny Drew, replaced at the last moment by Bud Powell (what a replacement, one might say!): the latter, recruited with such short notice, demands and obtains to record only standards. Alongside Gordon and Powell, the quartet includes the superb drummer Kenny Clarke (all three at that moment in the role of "Americans in Paris," luxury expatriates of jazz) and the excellent native bassist Pierre Michelot, one of the leading figures of the French scene. The session starts, however, on not very reassuring premises, with Gordon not yet artistically blossomed, Powell, although great, on the decline, and, above all, with the uncertainty of being far from the American Blue Note studios and the skillful hands of Rudy Van Gelder.

Mysteriously, on May 23, 1963, in Paris, all these adverse omens dissolve like snow in the sun and Gordon's quartet produces seven virtually perfect standards. Dex plays relaxed, possibly more than ever, confident, comfortable with his companions and with the pieces to interpret. His lines are clear, complete, fresh and they melt into the magma created by the precise and complex piano, full of melody and swing, of a monumental Powell. The rhythmic counterpoint offered by Clarke and Michelot is impeccable, fluid, tight, and engaging. Thus fly high, the Parkerian pearls of "Scrapple From The Apple" and "A Night In Tunisia": particularly for the latter, the stunning assertiveness with which Gordon handles the well-known four-bar break is to be highlighted, powerful like Bird, but playing half the notes. The ballads "Willow Weep For Me" and "Stairway To The Stars" flow languidly and delicately, with which Dex displays absolute mastery in interpreting and managing slow tempos. Finally, exciting are the renditions of "Broadway," a true classic from the '40s, and the two bonus tracks added to the original LP track list, "Our Love Is Here To Stay," a homage to Gershwin, and the trio improvisation on "Like Someone In Love," with Powell in a state of grace.
"Our Man In Paris," in short, undoubtedly ranks among the albums that made the history of African American music, and confers to Dexter Gordon a place of privilege among the greatest exponents of the genre.
Later, after dominating the '60s, fading in the '70s, amid drugs and excesses, in 1986 Dex was iconized in "Round Midnight," a poetic cinematic tribute to jazz by Bertrand Tavernier: the moving interpretation as a jazz musician eerily similar to Lester Young earned him one of the most deserved and respected Oscar nominations of all time, the last laurel before his death, which came on April 25, 1990, at the age of 67.
For many, in that film, he managed to give voice, shape, and sound to music and a lifestyle, as no one could ever do. Among those many, I am included.