The Chase!

Product Description:

Personnel: Gene Ammons, Dexter Gordon (tenor saxophone); Vi Redd (vocals); John Young, Jodie Christian (piano); Cleveland Eaton, Rufus Reid (bass); Wilbur Campbell, Steve McCall (drums).

Producer: Chuck Nessa.

Reissue producer: Ed Michel.

Recorded live at the North Park Hotel, Chicago, Illinois on July 26, 1970. Includes liner notes by Joel Segal.

Digitally remastered by Kirk Felton (1996, Fantasy Studios, Berkeley, California).

One came to virtually define be-bop zone tenor sax, the other was a unique and durable stylist who had success outside the jazz mainstream: Dexter Gordon and Gene Ammons. Gordon was one of the first tenor players to bring Charlie Parker's mercurial modern gospel to that instrument, and an influence on Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. Ammons was an earthy, breathy, blues-drenched player who absorbed the advances of bop (and beyond), and who directly influenced both the R&B of the 1940's and '50s and the soul/funk/jazz of the '60s and '70s.

THE CHASE! captures them in a relaxed good-time mode, where each good-naturedly shows off their considerable abilities for a wildly appreciative audience--and each other. Recorded in Chicago in 1970, backed by a group of local luminaries (including free-jazz drum legend Steve McCall), Gordon and Ammons go to town on the swinging bop standard "Wee Dot," and ballads including "My Funny Valentine." THE CHASE! captures a freewheeling blowout of a meeting of two tenor legends, playing purely for the sheer fun of it.