In 1962 the British journalist Les Tomkins talked to Gordon twice for Jazz Professional. Asked about his teachers, he named two: the man who kept after him in a big band, and the man he wanted to sound like.

Marshal Royal

Royal led the saxophones in Lionel Hampton’s first band, where Gordon sat at seventeen, and stayed on him about the parts, the intonation, the phrasing and the breathing. Gordon disliked him heartily at the time. Years later he met him at Birdland and thanked him.

Lester Young

My other debt is to Lester Young. He was my ideal.

He tried to emulate him in all ways, holding the horn up, the metal mouthpiece. Not by copying records note by note, he said, but by trying to grasp the conception Young had of playing the tenor.

The whole conversation is at the National Jazz Archive, linked from the Biography page.