The Chase. Recorded on June 12, 1947 in Hollywood, CA. Originally released as two sides of a 78rpm disc. Appears on the 2002 Spotlight CD "The Chase."
Personnel:
Dexter Gordon, tenor saxophone
Wardell Gray, tenor saxophone
Jimmy Bunn, piano
Red Callender, bass
Chuck Thompson, drum
A clip from disc 2, track 2 of Bopland: The Legendary Elks Club Concert L.A. 1947. Performed by Trummy Young, Dexter Gordon, Howard McGhee, Wardell Gray, Barney Kessel, and Hampton Hawes.
An excerpt of Disc 2, track 3, from Bopland: The Legendary Elks Club Conert L.A. 1947. Performed by the Bopland Boys: Howard McGhee, trumpet; Trummy Young, trombone; Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, tenor saxophones; Hampton Hawes, piano; Barney Kessel, guitar; Red Callender, bass; Roy Porter, drums; and Al Killian, trumpet.
Track 8 from Bopland: The Lengendary Elks Club Concert L.A. 1947. Performed by the Howard McGhee Orchestra. Likely bandmembers include Red Callender on bass and Roy Porter on drums.
Jazz history is sometimes – too often! – told as a sequence of turning points – a journey from one seminal moment to another, lingering at the milestones where everything – cultural, aesthetic, and even political – supposedly coalesces into "the new." One of these moments happened sixty years ago at the Elks Club on Central Avenue in Los Angeles. On July 6, 1947, Wardell Gray and Dexter Gordon locked musical horns with their tenor saxophones. Portions of the night's playing were released on a series of four 78s on the Bop! Records label.
Segregation galvanized the African-American community in Central Los Angeles. Its tightyly-knit social structure and cultural ferment nurtured artists who helped lay the groundwork for the avant-garde of the 1950s and inspire the community arts movement from the 1960s to the present in Los Angeles. Isoardi offers a history of this community's growth, development and contribution to jazz.
