A Swingin’ Affair was the second of Gordon’s 1962 recorded Blue Note sessions, taped a day after the similarly iconic Go. Connoisseurs of the label will doubtless fondly remember the original red-washed cover shot of a laughing Dexter and Barbara Long’s evocative sleeve notes. Buyers of this reissue will find the former added – minute-sized and seemingly as an afterthought – on the back cover, while the latter are slashed in half for no readily apparent reason. One can only hope that the current owners of the Blue Note catalogue will come up with the definitive answer to all this revisionist nonsense in what is the label’s 80th anniversary year. Fingers crossed. Apart from a wholly unnecessary addition of a solo track by Sonny Clark recorded two years earlier, the albums’ musical virtues have fortunately been allowed to stand as they are, confirming that the 1960s were Gordon’s peak. Everything from the joyous opener ‘Soy Califa’ through the melancholy balladry of ‘Don’t Explain’ to the groovy ‘The Backbone’ is the stuff from which the leader’s legend was carved. However, it’s a little difficult to gauge who might buy this version, which, to this writer’s mind, is only one step up from the line of horrendously rejigged Italian bootlegs that proliferated in the 1980s. Blue Notes were always records you could judge (and which sold) by their covers: I just can’t help thinking that there’s something a tad dishonourable in trying to palm off a gatefold sleeve and a couple of photos we’ve seen already as a USP. You pays your money.