Born in Los Angeles, Gordon started on clarinet and alto and eventually moved over to the tenor by the time he was 17. He joined Lionel Hampton's band in 1940 and stayed three years, before freelancing on the West Coast and taking one of the saxophone chairs in Billy Eckstine's big band. In 1945 he arrived in New York and slipped into place among the new beboppers, though Gordon never really seemed like a bop musician: even in this company his playing had a slow-talking quality which set him apart from musicians such as Sonny Stitt, or even Lucky Thompson. He sparred with fellow tenorman Wardell Gray in a series of duels both on and off record, but his career stalled altogether when he served time for narcotics offences between 1952 and 1954. He was incarcerated for a second time in 1956 and didn't reappear until 1960, when he took a role in the play The Connection (as did Jackie McLean and Freddie Redd). Blue Note made some strong comeback records, including the fine Go! and Dexter Calling (1962), but he then went to Europe and found the welcome so agreeable that he basically remained there for the next 15 years, basing himself in Copenhagen. Dozens of sessions made at the Café Montmartre have survived, and his only other records during this period were made for Prestige on brief return visits to the US. But he was in turn given a prodigal's welcome when he did visit America again in 1976, and the following year he went back to stay. Bruce Lundvall signed him to Columbia, provoking a call from Ahmet Ertegun: 'You just did the greatest thing! You signed Dexter Gordon!' But the records were in the end nothing special. Dexter's huge sound and giant tread had given his music a deeper potency than ever, but he too often fell back on quotes and much of the music took on a merely ambling feel. In his prime, his music had a kind of jovial gravitas at its heart, building on Lester Young's example without succumbing to Lester's waywardness, and he was a great influence on the likes of Coltrane and Rollins. There was no better man to play the role of Dale Turner, supposedly an amalgam of Young and Bud Powell, in Bertrand Tavernier's 1986 film Round Midnight, and the sad thing about the music on the score is that Gordon's playing has begun to sound as slow and clouded as Young's was in decline. By the end of the decade his poor health, exacerbated by many years of heavy drinking, was finally failing: he died of cancer, cirrhosis and kidney failure.

Biography from Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia (2005).

If you'd like more information, check out The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (2002) or The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz (2007), both of which are still in print.