Blues may be synonymous with sadness in most dictionaries, but in the blues playing of Dexter Gordon there's a pronounced ebullience. The bebop tenor saxophone titan had been blowing the blues away since the Forties, and these nine 1969-73 performances (two of them previously unissued alternate takes) display no diminution in his powers to delight listeners with his joyful, surging improvisations. On one selection Gordon is reunited with Gene Ammons, his old tenor cohort in the Billy Eckstine band, while another finds him locking horns with James Moody.

with Gene Ammons, Kenny Clarke, Stanley Clarke, Bob Cranshaw, Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris, Hampton Hawes, Louis Hayes, Albert "Tootie" Heath, Hank Jones, Sam Jones, Thad Jones, Wynton Kelly, James Moody, Rufus Reid, Buster Williams, and others