Recorded at the height of
Dexter Gordon's career resurgence following his signing to Blue Note in 1961,
Soul Sister captures the tenor saxophonist on two intimate and hard-swinging live quartet dates at the beginning of his 14-year European sojourn. These recordings fit chronologically after his iconic 1962 album
Go! and just prior to his 1963 album
Our Man in Paris, and as such nicely spotlight one of his most creatively fertile and musically adept periods. The first date finds him in a club in Copenhagen, Denmark in February of 1963 leading a group with
Bent Axen on piano,
William Schiopffe on drums, and most notably, a young
Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen on bass. Opening with a rendition of composer Julian Robledo's 1922 waltz "Three O'Clock in the Morning," reworked here as a dusky midtempo ballad in 4/4, the set is pure, unfiltered
Gordon as he pulls his group along with his warm tone and broad, languorous lines. This is
Gordon the half-lidded crooner, his burnished sound evoking the cigarette-and-suit profile he displayed on so many album covers. Equally vibrant moments follow as he dips into the bluesy title track (culled from his 1961 album
Dexter Calling) and offers a propulsive take on
Dizzy Gillespie's "A Night in Tunisia." No less intoxicating, the second set (recorded in a public radio studio in Oslo, Norway in November 1962) features a group with
Einar Iversen on piano, Erik Amundsen on bass, and
Jon Christensen on drums. Here, he dives into a jaunty version of the "I've Got Rhythm" contrafact "Second Balcony Jump" off
Go! before easing into a gauzy take on his ballad "Ernie's Tune." The album ends in rousing fashion as
Gordon revisits the bop blues "Stanley the Steamer," referencing, but also pushing beyond his classic solo from the version on drummer
Stan Levey's 1955 date
This Time's the Drum's on Me. This is
Dexter Gordon in his easy going, 1960s expatriate prime (an early version of the role he'd play in 1986's loosely biographical
'Round Midnight) playing the kind of robustly delivered and romantic jazz you can get lost in. ~ Matt Collar