Editing Wardell Gray (section)

===Decline===
At around this time, his recording sessions started becoming fewer&mdash;though a live session with Dexter Gordon, recreating the excitements of Central Avenue, and a studio session with [[Art Farmer]] and [[Hampton Hawes]], have fine examples of Gray's playing.

However, there are increasing signs of a lack of engagement around 1951/52, notably in a further live session with Dexter Gordon from February 1952, and it seems that he may have been becoming disillusioned with the music business. That he was still capable of playing superbly is shown by his work on a live jam session at [[The Haig]], but such sessions were by now very sparse, and more typical work from this period was recorded on a session with [[Teddy Charles]] .

Around this time, Gray became involved with drugs; friends reported that this was taking its toll. His playing was now less fluent, and a studio session in January 1955, which was to be his last, shows strong but (by his own standards) rather unsubtle playing.