This seven-CD set has to be top value for Dexter Gordon fans, especially those who particularly value the mellow autumn of his career. This period officially started on the 1976 night when he returned to New York from his long sojourn in Europe and Scandinavia – a scene captured live on the Homecoming album which opens this collection, and dramatically restaged of course in the classic movie Round Midnight [in which he was cast as the fictional saxophonist Dale Turner]. Dexter was certainly homesick for America, which in turn realised how much it had missed him. Savour that rich, broad-shouldered sound, the weighty phrases, delivered with the gravity of tablets of stone, and those amusing song-quotes, injected with a sly wit not heard since Bird's last flight. Dexter offered all that and more, as happily captured here in the albums Homecoming, Live at the Village Vanguard, Sophisticated Giant, Great Encounters (with Shaw, Fuller and Jefferson), Manhattan Symphonie, Live at Carnegie Hall (with Griffin) and Gotham City, plus bonus tracks snipped from sessions including George Duke, Stan Getz, George Benson, Jimmy Heath, Hubert Laws, Slide Hampton, Cedar Walton, Arthur Blythe and Tony Williams.

Choice rarities along the way include the big band settings for Sophisticated Giant, against which Dexter's ballad readings glow like antique gold. Because nearly all his famous records were made with small groups, people tend to forget that Dex grew up with big bands, Lionel Hampton's and Billy Eckstine's included. He loved sharing a stage with a crowd of contemporaries, as glimpsed toward the end of that Round Midnight movie. And those who miss his speaking voice, which was as deep and distinctive as his tenor-sax tone, will be happy to find a few seasonal words from him, a personal album promo and a Christmas message, tucked in here too. So just buy it. You won't regret it.