Maxine Gordon on Sophisticated Giant: the Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon

Maxine Gordon is an independent scholar with a lifetime career working with Jazz musicians. As an oral historian and archivist in the fields of Jazz and African American cultural history, her award-winning book, Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon (University of California Press, 2018) fulfills the promise she made to her late husband, jazz saxophonist and Academy Award nominated actor Dexter Gordon, to complete his biography.

She is currently working on her next book, Quartette: Four Women in Jazz, stories from the lives of Maxine Sullivan, Velma Middleton, Melba Liston, and Shirley Scott. (To be published by Howard University/Columbia University African Diaspora: Past, Present, Future). The book will be presented in a context that is described as “Jazz Geography,” using a close look at the element of place as a factor in the artists’ lives. Currently a Schomburg Fellow at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, 2024; a Radcliffe Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University, 2022-2023; Dora Maar House Fellowship, Ménerbes, France, 2021. M.A., New York University, (African Diaspora History); MacCracken Fellowship, New York University; Best Music Biography of the Year, 2019, ASCAP Deems Taylor Award