Go!

To call Dexter Gordon's Go! a masterpiece would be an understatement.

It's not only one of his best albums, but probably one of the best hard bop albums of all time. Gordon reportedly considered Go! his favourite of his own recordings. And in 2019 the Library of Congress selected Go! for the National Recording Registry as culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.

Interestingly, The Go! sessions was the very first date all four musicians had played together. Clark, Warren and Higgins had worked together earlier in 1962 backing Jackie McLean and Don Wilkerson, but they hadn't played with Gordon before.

But you don't hear that. They sound as if they had time to gel together. It just shows you what a calibre of musicians they were.

Go! has been reissued and remastered several times since the original release. In 1985, Blue Note reissued it on a CD for the first time. I couldn't find any specific information about the source, however, I suspect it was still the analog transfer with little mastering done back then.

In 1999 Rudy Van Gelder remastered the album. I've featured my impressions of that edition below.

Analogue Productions issued a SACD version in 2010. Kevin Gray remastered it again for vinyl in 2019, however, neither of those editions are available in digital format.

Important: There is an interesting sonic artifact in "Cheese Cake" that's worth paying attention to. It appears in the right channel, roughly in the same corner of the studio where Billy Higgins' drums are, and you can hear it only when Gordon is playing. I can't fully figure out what that sound is. My guess is that it is either Billy Higgins humming to Gordon's playing, or the sound of Gordon's sax was bouncing of an object in that spot in the studio (one of the drum cymbals, perhaps?) The artifact is quite pronounced, although it does not affect the listening experience.

Some editions - RVG, for example, - clearly tried to bury it, however, as usually with such artifacts, the cost of removing them is often greater than the win. You lose too many frequencies in the process, and need to cover that up with compression.