Frank Gordon

Clarion Echoes is the album trumpeter Frank Gordon recorded as a leader for Soul Note in New York in June 1985, with a sextet of Bobby Watson on alto saxophone, Ari Brown on tenor, pianist James Williams, bassist Rufus Reid and drummer Carl Allen. Gordon, born in Milwaukee in 1938, studied in Chicago from 1966, joined the AACM there and took lessons from Muhal Richard Abrams, Eddie Harris and Bunky Green. In 1976 he moved to New York to join the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis band. Six of the seven pieces are his own.

The session took place at Classic Sound Studios in New York on June 5 and 10, 1985, with A.T. Michael MacDonald engineering and Giovanni Bonandrini producing; Lee Jeske wrote the liner notes. The one piece not by Gordon is Benny Golson's I Remember Clifford, a fitting choice: Lewis Porter, in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, writes that Gordon's "clear and logical improvisation recalls Clifford Brown". Porter also hears Wayne Shorter, Debussy and Bartók behind his writing for strings and for small groups. Take Off opens the record at a little over seven minutes, and the first side closes with Illusion, a miniature of a minute and a half. The second side runs from Convulsion through the title piece to El Toro, three pieces of six minutes and more. Gordon's other recording credits listed by Porter run from the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra and Charli Persip's Superband to Max Roach's So What Brass Quintet.

This is a copy of the original 1985 Soul Note LP, catalogue number SN 1096, on 140 gram vinyl: CAM Jazz, which now owns the label, describes it as original stock rediscovered in its vaults. Ducale lists it as 121096-1.