Dexter Gordon moved to Copenhagen in 1962. He sent back a couple of musical postcards from Paris, one in 1963, Our Man In Paris, and another in 1964, One Flight Up (both Blue Note), but as far as American audiences were concerned, he was now out of sight and out of mind. Gordon, however, was having the time of his life. Lionised in Scandinavia – he was an important formative influence on the young Jan Garbarek, for example – he had time to reassess his style. Although he had influenced a young John Coltrane and a young Sonny Rollins, the master was clearly taking account of his pupils. His technical fluency increased, his harmonic understanding broadened and he achieved a deeper, more powerful saxophone tone. Still in his late-forties as the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, the talk was that he had never played better.

Recent releases of previously unissued live concerts in Europe during this period: Live from Magleas Højskole 1967 (Gearbox), The Squirrel (Parlophone) also 1967, and a Japanese concert with his regular European rhythm section, Tokyo 1975 (Elemental) provide vivid testimony of this. His perspicacious manager Maxine Gordon felt the time was right to re-launch his career in the States. A publicity campaign was mounted, and for his “Homecoming” concert at the Village Vanguard, crowds stretched down 7th Avenue South. Among the audience there to welcome him back were Charles Mingus, Cecil Taylor, John McLaughlin, Art Blakey, Yusef Lateef, Horace Silver, Dave Liebman and more. They weren't disappointed. ‘Little Red's Fantasy’ and ‘In Case You Haven't Heard’ offer a modern approach to harmony while ‘Gingerbread Boy’, ‘Backstairs’ and ‘Fenja’ were 12 bar blues that show Gordon effortlessly creating memorable chorus after memorable chorus. But the significance of this album goes beyond the music. Bruce Lundvall of Columbia had signed Gordon the week before when he warmed-up in Boston, the first of several acoustic artists he would sign at this time – McCoy Tyner, Woody Shaw (who appeared on this album), V.S.O.P., Freddie Hubbard and the Heath Brothers. These signings anticipated the direction the label would take in the 1980s by signing Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Terence Blanchard, Donald Harrison and others, triggering the Young Lions boom of the 1980s and early 1990s.