Dexter Gordon

LP version. Go! is the record on which Dexter Gordon sounds most at home during his early-sixties comeback on Blue Note. It is a quartet session cut in one day in August 1962, balanced between hard-swinging tunes and two unhurried ballads. It remains one of the most widely recommended entry points into his work.

Gordon had been among the first to carry the language of bebop onto the tenor saxophone in the 1940s. After a decade in which personal troubles kept him largely away from the studio, he signed with Blue Note in 1961 and began the run of albums that marked his rebirth. For this quartet date on 27 August 1962 he had Sonny Clark on piano, Butch Warren on bass and Billy Higgins on drums. Alfred Lion produced, and Rudy Van Gelder recorded the session in his studio at Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

Gordon's own Cheese Cake opens the record and sets its manner: a relaxed, swinging pulse, a big, warm sound, and phrases placed a fraction behind the beat. Cole Porter's Love for Sale is the longest piece, over seven minutes. The quartet takes it at a sure-footed clip, Higgins pushing the time and Clark comping in short, bluesy figures. The two ballads, Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn's I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry and Where Are You, are played slowly. Gordon states each melody almost intact before he starts to bend it. Second Balcony Jump and Three O'Clock in the Morning close the two sides on a lighter, more playful note.

The album was praised from the start. AllMusic, DownBeat and The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide all rated it at five stars, and in 2019 the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry. In the original liner notes Ira Gitler wrote that "everyone was really together" at the session.

This limited Blue Note 85 edition, issued in 2024 for the label's 85th anniversary, is pressed on blue vinyl and uses Kevin Gray's all-analogue stereo cut from the original master tapes.