“Jazz to me is a living music. It’s a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.” Those are the words of tenor saxophone great Dexter Gordon, born in Los Angeles on Feb. 27, 1923. Gordon performed with Lionel Hampton’s and Louis Armstrong’s bands in the 1940s, and soon distinguished himself as a key figure in the emergence of be-bop. Late 1940s recordings with fellow tenorman Wardell Gray, such as “The Chase” and “The Hunt,” served notice that a major new jazz stylist had emerged. Gordon’s tenor saxophone innovations influenced numerous musicians, including John Coltrane.
Gordon’s career spanned many decades and took unexpected turns. Not only did Gordon have an audience with President Jimmy Carter (a 1978 event that also featured trumpet legend Dizzy Gillespie, and the then-President singing along to a chorus of “Salt peanuts”), but he left his mark on celluloid as well. The 1987 film ‘Round Midnight, directed by Bertrand Tavernier, paid tribute to the black musicians who lived and performed in Paris in the late 1950s, and starred Dexter Gordon in an Oscar-nominated role as saxophonist Dale Turner, a fictional character inspired by tenor saxophonist Lester Young and pianist Bud Powell. Set at the Blue Note club in Saint-Germain-des-Pres a