Jordon Dixon - On! (2019)

His second album On! Was completely authorial, the musician recorded in the company of the same Johnson, bassist Herman Barney and drummer Carol Wee Dashiell III. In two tracks, the quartet turned into a quintet with the joining of the trumpet player Jay Es Williams. Dixon's partners got a lot of freedom in his compositions and proved that they know how to use it. But, of course, basically the attention of the listener will be focused on the game of Jordon Dixon himself. The press release of the album claims that his game at times resembles Stanley Turentaine and Dexter Gordon at the same time. I do not undertake to challenge or confirm this thought. But the fact that Dixon has a strong, clean and very, I would say, melodious sound is for sure. At the same time, Jordon is good both in quite energetic rooms with a strong blues flavor, like Notes From The Nook, presented in the program in two versions at once, and in slow ballads like What You’ve Done For Me. Well, and his native Louisiana, or rather New Orleans, he recalls with obvious pleasure in the play Fake Flowers, built in the same chord system as the famous When The Saints Go Marching In.

I understood two things about Jordon Dixon before listening to his new album On! But only after becoming acquainted with his biography: he is totally devoted to jazz and his native country. Dixon is a southerner, he was born in the state of Louisiana, in the city of Baton Rouge, and those places are literally saturated with music: blues, soul, jazz ... Dixon began playing tenor saxophone at 12 years old, and after three years began to constantly go on stage local clubs. But after school, he ordered his fate extraordinarily: he went to serve in the US Marine Corps (let me remind you, this is voluntary in the States). Jordon spent in the ranks of these elite units as much as eleven years! After serving and not forgetting about the tenor saxophone, where he and the army had many opportunities to play, Jordon Dixon resigned with honor and found himself at the University of Columbia, in Washington, where the jazz program was led by pianist Ellin Johnson, who had not become only Dixon's mentor, but also his partner in Jordon's debut album A Conversation Among Friends. Dixon received his degree in 2016 and today is quite noticeable on the jazz capital scene.