Joe Gordon “Lookin’ Good!”

After debuting in Boston in the 1940s and collaborating with Lionel Hampton, Charlie Mariano, and Charlie Parker, American trumpeter Joe Gordon furthered his career by working with Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, and Horace Silver in the mid-1950s. In 1961, he released a leader album on Contemporary Records. This album features recordings from a session held in a Los Angeles studio that same year, with a quintet including Jimmy Woods (alto sax), Dick Whittington (piano), Jimmy Bond (bass), and Milt Turner (drums). The album showcases Gordon's distinctive playing style, characterized by a bright, clear tone and melodic phrasing, as heard in the percussive and Latin-tinged track B2. Highly recommended in its entirety, this album was reissued on the Original Jazz Classics series by Fantasy in 1984 as a US pressing.


A1: Terra Firma Irma