Joe Alexander

[Big Wheel]

Listened to "Delirium" on Tadd Dameron's Fontainebleau today and thought this guy sounded almost like a cross between early Hank Mobley and Charlie Rouse. (There's a little lick at 1:10 that Rouse used all the time.) Anyone else hear this resemblance? And is much known of Alexander? The Lewis Porter Coltrane bio appears to have a sentence or two on him but I can't see more than the preview in Google Books.

[BillF]

Had that disc since the sixties and thought in my youth that Alexander was a big name. He certainly sounded like one! Then in the years that followed I never heard of him again.

[Niko]

he was mostly active in (Dameron's hometown) Cleveland and recorded a Riverside or Jazzland Album in the Cannonball Adderley Productions series - that's all i know...

[brownie]

The only album under his name

I have that Jazzland LP somewhere. A good one with Ray Charles trumpet player John Hunt and a solid rhythm section.

[marcello]

Interesting note here:

Coltrane - Cleveland

"Less than two weeks later, in June of 1951, Coltrane joined the band of Clevelander Gay Crosse that was playing at the Showboat nightclub in Philadelphia. Saxophonist James Moody said he also remembered hearing Coltrane play with Crosse’s band at the Majestic Hotel’s Rose Room in Cleveland. Some historians say Cleveland saxophonist Joe Alexander, who was a member of Crosse’s Good Humor Six, was a major influence for the young Coltrane."