Billboard : 09/25/1965
Three Stars

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Cashbox : 09/25/1965
Jazz Best Bet

Three blues numbers make up the delectable fare on this outing with Dexter Gordon featured at tenor sax with four other hands equally proficient. The funk served up should attract plenty of listeners who should be delighted by the tremendous brass sounds of Gordon and Donald Byrd as well as Kenny Drew‘s piano takeoffs, the drum showing of Art Taylor and the efforts of bassist Niels Pedersen. Selections: Tanya, Darn That Dream and Coppin’ The Haven.

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Asbury Park Press
Don Lass : 02/12/1966

The resurgence of Dexter Gordon in the past three years has been important for several reasons. First, he is one of the most creative of the modern tenor saxophonists. Second, his style, a mode of playing developing during the 1950s, has strongly influenced the dominant saxophonist in jazz today, John Coltrane. Third, Gordon continues to advance while still playing consistently satisfying jazz. This album, recorded in Europe, features the tenor saxophonist with expatriates Kenny Drew, piano, Donald Byrd, trumpet, and Arthur Taylor, drums, with Danish bassist Ørsted Pedersen. Though it contains only three tracks, one of which consumes all of Side 1, the session comes off extremely well with Gordon in superb form. The best track is Darn That Dream on the basis of Gordon’s beautiful two choruses and Drew’s strong solo. Gordon’s tone throughout remains full-bodied and warm no matter what the tempo while Drew, a versatile musician who is most at home in this modern context, plays clean but inwardly complex statements that complement Gordon nicely. Byrd has some good moments, too, especially on Tanya, but his playing doesn’t measure up to Gordon’s. Pedersen, only 19, is an excellent accompanist.

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Riverside Press-Enterprise
Ralph J. Gleason : 05/30/1965
Rhythm Section Column

Tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon has a new LP coming out on Blue Note next month. He cut it in Paris a couple of years ago and Kenny Drew is the pianist. Gordon is currently set to open Copenhagen for three months this summer and will record in New York before he leaves… New drummer in the Stan Getz Quartet is Ed Marshall… Pianist Phineas Newborn is working with a trio that currently includes Philly Joe Jones on drums… The next Miles Davis LP is due from Columbia in August… Charlie Watts, drummer with the Rolling Stones, the British rock ‘n roll group, is a jazz drummer, who once played with Benny Goodman and who has written and illustrated a book of tributes to Charlie Parker… Liberty Records has bought World Pacific and Pacific Jazz and Richard Rock will continue to produce LPs for the company now… MGM/Verve has signed an agreement with Folkways to distribute a series of LPs from the Folkways catalogue by people such as Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and other folk and blues singers…

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San Francisco Examiner
Ralph J. Gleason : 10/03/1965

Dexter Gordon is one of the tenor saxophone players upon whom the modern school is founded. He has been making a series of LPs for Blue Note in recent years which has shown off his thick, deeply resonant and strongly swinging tenor tone to excellent advantage. One Flight Up includes pianist Kenny Drew, drummer Art Taylor, trumpeter Donald Byrd and bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, the Danish virtuoso bassist. It’s a fine album. Dexter’s ballad solo on Darn That Dream is one of the best tenor solos of the year, a grandly conceived and proudly executed improvisation.

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Down Beat : 11/18/1965
Don DeMichael : 4 stars

Gordon is a consistently satisfying jazz musician. Either in person or on records his playing is straightforward and emotional but always sculptured in flowing, unadorned phrases that wend through the chords in such a manner as to belie their great rhythmic strength. And it is Gordon’s conception of time that makes him such an excellent musician – without it, his highly musical ideas would be less moving.

On Tanya and Haven, he constructs solos with his usual care and attention to the shape of the entire improvisation. Both compositions are similar in their reliance on modes a good deal of the time, but Gordon, unlike many other jazzmen, does not depend on “licks” that fit a particular sequence, no matter the them; instead, he builds individual statements – the mark of an artist.

Gordon also is a master of the ballad. His first two choruses on Dream, his most moving solo in this album, maintains poignant sadness without dipping into sentimentality. His tone seems almost perfectly suited to ballad playing – full-bodied, warm but uncloying. The relaxation he achieves is never allowed to become flabby; he evidently has an inner voice that tells him when the line needs tightening.

Drew’s solos, like Gordon’s, are uncluttered (though not uncomplex) and reveal keen musicianship, one that considers the whole as well as the parts. On Tanya he builds a handsome solo that places chords in opposition to single-note phrases. But his most moving playing is on Dream, a lovely 16 bars between Gordon’s statements.

Pederson, not yet 20, is a strong, sure bassist. He is confined to section work on this record, but his underpinnings do much to vary the music’s texture. He and Taylor work well together too.

Byrd is present only on Tanya and Haven, and while his solos are highly competent, they lack the invention of his playing in the past. Both his lengthy improvisations are similar, employing in some instances the same phrases. Perhaps this would not have happened if either his Tanya or Drew’s Haven had been dropped in favor of a more contrasting composition.

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Liner Notes by Leonard Feather

In July 1964 an informal and mutually stimulating discussion by Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew and two other expatriate jazzmen was published in Down Beat. The subject was “American in Europe.”

Perhaps the most significant remark in the entire round-table talk was made by Dexter. “Since I’ve been over here,” he said, “I felt that I could breathe, and just be more or less a human being, without being white or black… I think the Scandinavian audiences are very discerning. In fact, my biggest experience in communicating with audiences has been here in Copenhagen… The audience here is very ‘inside.’ This is their capacity.”

The intelligent interest shown by their listeners, and the almost total lack of racial prejudice, are not the only factors that have lured so many American musicians to the Continent and kept them there in recent years. An equally vital attraction is the opportunity to work steadily in a single job without having to shift around constantly from club to club or city to city every other week.

“I have played for months on end at the Montmartre in Copenhagen,” said Dexter recently. “That’s been more or less my headquarters ever since I moved over here in 1962. Now I’ve never in my life played three or four months continuously in the U.S. The opportunity to work regularly in the same spot gives you the kind of feeling you need to stretch out, relax, and at the same time develop musically without having those job-to-job worries hanging over your head.”

Kenny Drew had some similar observations to make along these lines, in the Down Beat report. Asked what he had gotten out of living and playing in Europe, he replied, “In a way, I’ve found myself, because I’ve had to be more responsible to myself and for myself… I’m my own man. I’ve been taking care of business myself – something I never did in the States… Musically, I’ve found myself by working so long and so much… I can think more, act more, be more, I guess… My mind is functioning properly now.”

Obviously, conditions and reactions like these must be reflected in the music. Dexter’s first overseas album, Our Man in Paris (Blue Note 4146), made it apparent that his residence abroad would stimulate him to a consistently high performance level, and that there would be no danger of his stagnating in the new milieu.

Though Copenhagen has been Dex’s home for the past couple of years, the other European capitals are of course within easy reach and he has made several field trips, including a couple to Paris. It was here that Francis Wolff of Blue Note arranged for him to assemble an all-star group for the present sides.

Kenny Drew left his native land for Paris in June of 1960 to play with The Connection. Though only set for six weeks’ work with the play, he says “I actually knew I wasn’t going back under any circumstances.” He has lived and worked in Paris since then.

Donald Byrd and Art Taylor spent the last half of 1958 touring the Continent with the later Bobby Jaspar. Byrd returned to Paris in 1963 to study with Nadia Boulanger, but came home in the summer of 1964 to teach at Ken Morris’ Summer Jazz Clinics. Taylor, after working around New York with various groups, left for Paris, Rome and other points East in the early fall of 1963.

This leaves one member of the present group unaccounted for: the gentleman with the double-barreled name, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen.

“This is a remarkable example,” says Dexter, “of the kind of talent that’s coming up now on the Continent. He’s only 18 years old, but I believe he’s the very best bass player in all of Europe. Kenny and I worked with him in Copenhagen, and of course I just had to bring him to Paris to make this session with us.”

Ørsted (he is usually known by this name) was only 17 when Count Basie heard him and promptly offered him a job. Because of problems that arose concerning his tender age, the young Dane never came to the U.S., but the fact that men like Dex and Basie have flipped over him would seem to indicate there will be limitless opportunities for him. As these sides show, he has everything required of a bass player nowadays – a great sound, suppleness, ideas and a firm beat.

Given this unusual concentration of talent, it is not surprising that the five musicians were compatible and eloquent enough to stretch out extensively, so that the Donald Byrd composition Tanya runs to 18 minutes and occupies the entire first side.

What is remarkable about this track is not its length, but rather the consistency of performance that is maintained throughout; it is evident that each soloist felt free to blow until he had completed his thoughts, or sustained the mood for what he felt was just the right duration.

There are two simply thematic patterns. The first is based on a haunting declamatory E Flat Minor 7 figure:



This figure is retained, with variations, as Kenny Drew uses it for introduction, interludes and backgrounds, off and on throughout the side.

Dexter’s solo, while displaying all his expected warmth and strength, is most notable for its conservative yet imaginative use of spare melodic lines, sometimes even of single notes bent downward in a spellbinding lament. A less mature artist might have used this time to build up to endless flurries of sixteenth notes; yet at the end of his performance the feeling is the same – rhythmically, melodically and technically – as when he began, which gives the solo an extraordinary consistency. Donald maintains the same spirit in his own work; then Kenny, in a harmonically rich contribution, shows the extend to which he has absorbed the new modal feeling that has been invading so much of the modern jazz scene.

Coppin’ The Haven, a Kenny Drew line, is a 32-bar minor theme played in unison by the two horns. Though somewhat shorter and taken a a slightly faster tempo, it has some of the same qualities as Tanya in terms of mood-building. Kenny’s touch and sound, both in the comping and during his admirable solo, indicate that he has indeed developed impressively under conditions nourished by steady work in happy company. The entire rhythm section, in fact, distinguishes itself on this track, and the great clarity and separation enables one to hear exactly what each member is doing to instill a maximum of variety into the performance.

Darn That Dream is a quartet track; in other words, a ballad solo by Dexter. The 25-year-old song, its pretty changes untarnished by time, makes as suitable a vehicle for his slow, rhapsodic style as did You’ve Changed, a highlight of an earlier album (Doin’ Allright, Blue Note 4077). Kenny’s half-chorus offers a simply beautiful example of how to keep a solo moving without ever losing the lyrical essence of the theme.

I don’t know whether there was any special significance in the title of this album, other than whatever can be deduced from the cover photo (could it be that that’s Tanya’s pad up there?). Anyhow, it could aptly be interpreted as meaning that the participants have moved one flight up in creativity, that their flights of fancy are freer than ever under Paris skies. Here are four men who have spent a substantial proportion of their time lately learning the ins and outs of French, Danish and other languages; with them is a teenaged musical prodigy who has spoken Danish all his life. Together, the five offer a splendid demonstration of how to speak the international language of jazz.