Dexter Gordon on playing with Fletcher Henderson

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Dexter Gordon discusses Los Angeles

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Dexter Gordon discusses his history with addiction

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Q: “You stopped drinking – it was getting to you physically and it was getting to your head – but that’s not the first time you’ve done that, you had quite a problem with drugs at one time and you licked that and now you don’t drink and it doesn’t even bother you. You must have a hell of a personal will power because if there’s anything hard to give up it’s smoking cigarettes, if there’s anything harder it’s…”

A: “Well, both problems, you know, whipped me. “Whooped me,” Ali says. You know, finally after you go through those things for years, you know, just finally finality wears off and you realize that it's so detrimental to you and to everybody around you that, you know, in your mind that you must stop. You've got to stop, but then it takes time to do it. You know, you can't do it overnight. It takes a little time, you know. So like, you know, I've been lucky that I've been able to do it, you know. Like I told you the other night, right now I feel, you know, a hundred, two hundred per cent better. I lost about twenty pounds, you know, all that beer, bloat so forth. Yeah, I really is okay now.”