I’ve been grading examinations all day and still haven’t quite finished so here’s a quick post I’ve been keeping up my sleeve for a busy day. It’s the great Dexter Gordon recorded in 1980 playing As Time Goes By. Ever since Coleman Hawkins recorded Body and Soul in 1939, the yardstick by which tenor saxophonists have tended to be measured is their playing on ballads and Dexter Gordon was right up there among the best. It’s very hard to play with accuracy and imagination at slow tempo than it is to produce a quick flurry of notes. Young musicians can learn a lot from his intelligent, but never overcomplicated, improvisations.
This performance was filmed in 1980 when Dexter Gordon was 57 years old but it has to be said that he looks much older, no doubt as a result of his lifelong struggle with drugs and alcohol. He seems somewhat inebriated as he recites the words to the song at the start – something he did regularly in live performances – but once he’s in the zone he plays quite beautifully. I am sad I never got to see him live; Dexter Gordon passed away in 1990, at the age of 67.
P.S. When he was much younger, Dexter Gordon featured in one of the most famous of all jazz photographs taken by Herman Leonard in 1948 which I’m taking the liberty of posting here:
Time goes by indeed.
In the Dark 