As jazz musicians go, Dexter Gordon was among the coolest. He walked cool, he talked cool and he played cool. Cool came naturally to him. Perhaps that side of him came from growing up in Los Angeles in the 1930s. Or perhaps it came from meeting all of the cool musicians his physician father treated, including Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton. [Photo above of Dexter Gordon in Paris in the early 1960s by Francis Wolff (c)Mosaic Images]
Here are five Dexter Gordon videos that recently were uploaded to YouTube:
Here's Gordon in Europe in 1971...
Here's Gordon with Sahib Shihab on flute and Lars Gullin on baritone saxophone in Copenhagen in 1962...
Here's Gordon with Red Rodney (t), Kenny Drew (p), Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen (b) and Sven Erik Nørregaard (d) in Copenhagen in 1974...
Here's Gordon playing with kids in Denmark...
And here's Gordon in Belgium in 1964...