1978 was a banner year for Dexter Gordon. Maxine Gordon (then Gregg) had started to manage his career and proved to be a one woman tour de force in marketing and booking a jazz giant who had been largely forgotten in his home country. Signing with Columbia changed Dexter’s life in many ways, boosting his career, increasing his work opportunities, giving him enough security to move from Copenhagen to New York and allowing him to form and groom his own working band for the first time in his life at age 52! The wonderful quartet included George Cables on piano, Rufus Reid on bass, and Eddie Gladden on drums and was at its peak from its first notes to its last gig, as this November 8, 1978 concert at the Châteauvallon Jazz Festival bears out. Dexter is in a joyous and fiery mood, peppering his solos with outrageous quotes from other songs and stretching out.