Gearbox  - GB1526  - 180 Gram Virgin Vinyl - 1st time on Vinyl - AAA 100% Analogue

All Analogue Valve Mastering - 500 Copies Limited Edition -  Previously Unreleased

 

This is a 1967 Danish TV performance that has never released on vinyl before. Dexter Gordon is heard at his best and most powerful on these three tracks of the hardest bop, the swingingest Afro-inspired music and the most tender of ballads recorded on a hot Summer’s day at Magleaas High School in front of an audience of young musicians with ‘the best rhythm section in Europe’ - pianist Kenny Drew, the 21 year-old double bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Petersen and drummer Albert 'Tootie' Heath. 

 

Recorded in Denmark Soy Califa: Live from Magleaas Højskole 1967 is to be released, the London label indicates, at the end of March. The title track ‘Soy Califa’ featured in a separate version with a different quartet five years earlier on the 1962 Blue Note album A Swingin’ Affair, and here Gordon (27 February 1923-25 April 1990) on this little known session is captured instead with pianist Kenny Drew, bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, and drummer Albert ‘Tootie’ Heath, the only surviving member. This same quartet had a little earlier in the summer of 1967 also recorded elsewhere in Denmark at the Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen captured on Black Lion albums that include The Montmartre Collection, Vols 1 & 2.

 

On Soy Califa... besides the latinate title track where Long Tall Dexter intones the words ‘Soy Califa’ at the beginning, the release features Johnny Mandel's ‘The Shadow Of Your Smile’ a song that featured a few years earlier in the film The Sandpiper, and a 12 minute-plus cut called ‘The Blues Up And Down’. None of these tracks have been commercially released on vinyl or CD, according to Gearbox, but appeared on a DVD of the concert which is long deleted, the label says.