Personnel: Dexter Gordon (tenor saxophone); Thad Jones (trumpet, flugelhorn); Hank Jones (piano); Stanley Clarke (bass); Louis Hayes (drums). Recorded at the Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey in 1972. Digitally remastered by Phil De Lancie (1998, Fantasy Studios, Berkeley, California). The opening cut screams "It's 1972!" more effectively than any photo of yet another poised, sophisticated bop musician succumbed to the big pointy collars and paisley bell-bottoms of the time ever could. On CA'PURANGE, the quintet of stars lays into the percolating one-chord vamp with a vengeance. If you like things straight up, you'll be intrigued by how Gordon and company manage to take on such then-contemporary grooves bare-handed-there's nary a Rhodes keyboard in sight. The balance of CA'PURANGE is the educated bop you'd expect from musicians who, save for relative upstart Stanley Clarke, were already elder statesmen nearly three decades earlier. "The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face" was a pop hit at one point, but you'd never know it (in a good way) from the noir, late-night treatment it gets here. Gordon caresses the melody with breathy tenorisms; Hank Jones shades, colors, and coaxes behind Gordon and brother Thad on trumpet; Louis Hayes provides nearly invisible brushwork. Jones shines once again on the blues "Oh! Karen O," while Sonny Rollins' jazz standard "Airegin" rounds things out. This reissue includes an (obligatory) alternate take of the latter.