Dexter Gordon

Our Man In Paris was Dexter Gordon's first Blue Note album made in Europe, recorded in Paris on 23 May 1963 and released at the end of that year. The label calls it, symbolically, the last true bebop album. The tenor saxophonist had recorded Go! and A Swingin' Affair in the summer of 1962. He then left the United States, beginning fourteen years abroad with Copenhagen as his base.

For the date at CBS Studios, Gordon worked with two bebop pioneers who also lived in Paris, Bud Powell on piano and Kenny Clarke on drums. The French bassist Pierre Michelot completed the quartet. Francis Wolff produced, and Claude Ermelin engineered. Gordon had planned a different session, with another pianist and new compositions of his own. Powell would not play new material, so the quartet settled on standards and bebop tunes during rehearsal. His health was poor at the time. On that day, though, he was in fine form.

The programme opens with Charlie Parker's Scrapple From The Apple, taken at a brisk tempo, with Gordon's big, unhurried tone riding on top. Willow Weep For Me is the long ballad of the first side, close to nine minutes. The second side moves through Broadway and Stairway To The Stars. It ends with Dizzy Gillespie's A Night In Tunisia, often counted among Gordon's finest performances on record.

The album has stayed at the centre of Gordon's discography. The Penguin Guide To Jazz gave it its maximum rating and placed it in its core collection, and The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide gave it five stars. Reviewing the 2003 remaster, The Guardian called it "one of the all-time classics." The original liner notes were by Nat Hentoff.

This Blue Note Classic Vinyl edition is stereo and all-analogue, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal.