Dimensions Extensions, an album saxophonist Sam Rivers recorded in 1967, is joining Blue Note Records’ Tone Poet reissue series. Starting today, a new edition of the LP personally overseen by the “Tone Poet” himself, Joe Harley, and remastered by Kevin Gray directly from the original analog tapes is available to order.
Although Dimensions Extensions was recorded in March 1967 at Van Gelder Studios in New Jersey, it didn’t come out on Blue Note until nearly two decades later, in 1986. The six-track session featured Rivers on both tenor and soprano sax, as well as the flute; he was accompanied by Donald Byrd on trumpet, Julian Priester on trombone, James Spaulding on alto sax and flute, Cecil McBee on bass, and Duke Ellington’s grand-nephew Steve Ellington on drums.
Rivers signed with Blue Note in the mid-1960s after getting his start performing with the drummer Tony Williams and, in 1964, the Miles Davis Quintet. Over the course of his career with the label, he recorded four albums as a bandleader and made multiple appearances as a sideman, playing alongside Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Andrew Hill, and Larry Young. He was also a composer and wrote much of the music on his debut Fuchsia Swing Song, which has since become a popular standard among tenor saxophonists.
Dimensions Extensions is just the latest of Rivers’ recordings to get the Tone Poet treatment. His second and third Blue Note releases as bandleader, 1965’s Contours and 1966’s A New Conception, are also both part of the collection. Dimensions Extensions would be Rivers’ final album on Blue Note, although he would go on to have a lengthy career spanning all the way into the early 2000s, when he was a member of a working orchestra in Orlando, Florida. He died from pneumonia in the city in 2011, at the age of 88.
