One band, one year, two gigs and two very different nights for Long Tall Dexter. The simultaneous release of these two previously unissued radio recordings by Gordon's late 1970s quartet will be manna from heaven for fans of the big man's post-‘homecoming’ period. Yet while they are both welcome, such extended exposure isn't always as kind as it might be.

The earlier Willisau set suffers both in comparison to the more listenable audio of the Elemental release, but also from a sense that a few months on the leader and his men are just that much better acquainted. Listening to the earlier version of Horace Silver's ‘Strollin’, a theme seemingly tailor-made for Gordon's laid-back gait, one senses occasional moments of auto-pilot. At Châteauvallon, however, he truly digs in, finding things in the song's sequences that are very far from rote.

Indeed, the whole French concert has a relaxation its Swiss counterpart never really matches. Both, though, have moments where Gordon's slow-motion ballad tempo preferences are suddenly blown apart by pianist George Cables' astonishing unaccompanied improvisations – as energising as a blast of fresh air – and both boast blues solos by the tenorist that are textbook examples of his later style, the tone hard-boiled and full on, his own ideas punctuated with all manner of outrageous quotations from other songs.

Almost everything is long, in some instances very long, ‘More Than You Know’ from Châteauvallon clocking in at 24 minutes, ‘Gingerbread Boy’ from the same gig at a staggering 37 minutes. And it's in this sense of ‘in the moment’ excess that something of the impact of Gordon's playing can ironically be lost. Playing a nine-minute blues on the earlier date (‘The Jumpin’ Blues') he sounds wholly convincing. Nine months later, he's stretching for half an hour with a hint of giving the public what he thinks they want. That said, every beat of these two sets is jazz with a capital J and as such they will delight admirers of Gordon in particular and hard bop in general. My only advice is take them one sip at a time; this is a heady brew and to imbibe it all at once may leave you more than a little punch-drunk. The best vintage, for my money, is the French.