Dexter Gordon Quartet – Stable Mable LP 1977 Inner City Horace Parlan SoWhat

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Dexter Gordon Quartet – Stable Mable LP 1977  Inner City Records Horace Parlan So What
This is sooooo Good hearing Dex play So What is worth it all
Stable Mable is an album led by saxophonist Dexter Gordon recorded in 1975 and released on the Danish SteepleChase label

Dexter Gordon is in frequently exuberant form on this quartet session with pianist Horace Parlan, bassist Niels Pedersen and drummer Tony Inzalaco. The material, which includes "Just Friends," "Misty," "Stablemates" and "Red Cross," is familiar, but the veteran tenor sounds quite inspired throughout the joyous outing.

Dexter Gordon (February 27, 1923 – April 25, 1990) was an American jazztenor saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. He was among the most influential early bebop musicians. Gordon's height was 6 feet 6 inches (198 cm), so he was also known as "Long Tall Dexter" and "Sophisticated Giant". His studio and performance career spanned more than 40 years.

Gordon's sound was commonly characterized as being "large" and spacious and he had a tendency to play behind the beat. He inserted musical quotes into his solos, with sources as diverse as "Happy Birthday" and well-known melodies from the operas of Wagner. Quoting from various musical sources is not unusual in jazz improvisation, but Gordon did it frequently enough to make it a hallmark of his style. One of his major influences was Lester Young. Gordon, in turn, was an early influence on John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. Rollins and Coltrane then influenced Gordon's playing as he explored hard bop and modal playing during the 1960s.

Gordon had a genial and humorous stage presence. He was an advocate of playing to communicate with the audience,which was his musical approach as well. One of his idiosyncratic rituals was to recite lyrics from each ballad before playing it.

Gordon was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in the Bertrand Tavernier film Round Midnight (Warner Bros, 1986), and he won a Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Soloist, for the soundtrack album The Other Side of Round Midnight (Blue Note Records, 1986). He also had a cameo role in the 1990 film Awakenings. In 2018, Gordon's album Go (Blue Note, 1962) was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

In addition to the recordings Gordon did under his American label contracts, live recordings by European labels and live video from his European period have been released. In 1975, Dexter Gordon signed an exclusive recording contract with Danish label SteepleChase, for which he recorded some of his most inspired sessions including The Apartment (1974), More Than You Know (1975), Stable Mable, Swiss Nights Vol. 1, 2 and 3, Something Different, Lullaby for a Monster, and not least Biting the Apple(1976), recorded during his homecoming trip to New York, featuring Barry Harris, Sam Jones and Al Foster. The album received the Grand Prix De Jazz in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977. SteepleChase released live dates from his mid-1960s tenure at the Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen. The video was released in the Jazz Icons series.