Dexter Gordon

Landslide gathers seven pieces that Dexter Gordon recorded for Blue Note in 1961 and 1962 and that stayed on the shelf until 1980. Producer Michael Cuscuna assembled it from three separate sessions for the LT series, the line through which the label finally released vault material from its peak years. It is a set of hard-swinging tunes and ballads from the period of Gordon's comeback.

The title track, a Gordon original, dates from 9 May 1961, early in his Blue Note contract, a quartet with Kenny Drew on piano and Philly Joe Jones on drums. Three pieces come from 5 May 1962, a quintet built around the trumpet of Tommy Turrentine. The last three were cut on 25 June 1962 with Dave Burns on trumpet, Sonny Clark on piano and Jones again on drums. All seven were recorded by Rudy Van Gelder in Englewood Cliffs, but none of them found a place on the albums Blue Note issued at the time.

Turrentine contributes You Said It, and the May 1962 quintet also takes on the standards Love Locked Out and Serenade in Blue, Gordon giving the ballad his broad, unhurried treatment. From the June date, Blue Gardenia survives only in mono and is presented that way. The same session also produced a version of Second Balcony Jump, the Billy Eckstine and Gerald Valentine tune Gordon would record again two months later for Go!. Hearing the two takes side by side shows how freely he reworked a piece from one date to the next.

Reviewing the album for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted that nothing on it is bad and that the material remains first-rate hard bop. The 1980 sleeve notes were written by the critic Robert Palmer.

This stereo Tone Poet edition presents Blue Gardenia in mono. It was produced by Joe Harley, mastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio from the original analogue master tapes. It is pressed on 180g vinyl at RTI and packaged in a deluxe gatefold tip-on jacket.