It’s hard to know where to begin when reviewing a corpus of influential jazz that’s presented on 11 discs and spans some twenty years across the most vibrant time in the art form. Perhaps that’s the best place to start: this weighty boxed set compiles every note that Dexter Gordon recorded for Prestige Records, from a 1950 live session with Wardell Gray (originally issued as Wardell Gray Memorial, Vol. 2) to the 1973 Montreaux Jazz Festival.

But to look at the broad sweep of the anthology is misleading. Almost 80 of the set’s 88 tracks come from the years 1969 to 1973, a time in which Dex was in Copenhagen. This is Dex after kicking heroin, after having influenced scores of other players, but also after largely disappearing from the public’s consciousness. At the time he stayed on the festival circuit, but these Prestige recordings—eight studio albums and five live albums as leader or co-leader—formed the primary document of these years. The other tracks are culled from the aforementioned 1950 Wardell Gray session, Dex’s 1965 comeback The Resurgence Of Dexter Gordon, and a session playing in Gene Ammons’ band at Montreaux.

The music itself is straight ahead small-group performances, standards and post-bop movers. But what performances! Gordon may have started his career as the most accomplished tenor player of the bebop era, but he made his lasting mark as the man with the most beautiful tenor tone in jazz history. As fellow tenor man Benny Golson notes in the booklet’s lengthy essay, “With Dexter it wasn’t a flurry of notes. It was the way he played the notes that he played! It was like he gave more attention to each note rather than a slew of ideas. Charlie Parker came with rapid fire, and Dexter came with single shots, but they were well-aimed.”

There are a few characteristic ideas that emerge over and over from Dex’s performances in this set, though, notably his affinity for a witty musical quote (the brief interlude from “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” in the midst of “Misty” on Disc 5 comes to mind); the slightly behind-the-beat phrasing and hard swinging on the alternate take of “Boston Bernie” on Disc 4; the bold melodic statements of “Sophisticated Lady,” as heard in the first of the two Montreaux sessions in this box set on Disc 5; consistent invention and rhythmic exploration on “The Panther,” heard both live and as the title cut from the 1970 studio recording on Disc 6; out-dueling Gene Ammons on “The Chase” with pure tonal invention and closing in on the kill with quote after quote on Disc 8; smoothly rounding the corners of Miles’ “Milestones” (from the Tangerine sessions) on Disc 9; the Afro-Cuban funk of “Ca’Purange” (with Stanley Clarke in the house) on Disc 10; and the Coltranean angles of “Blues à la Suisse” in the final Montreaux sessions on Disc 11.