Mr. Gordon was best known for his ongoing roles as Andrew Emerson on the 1990s sitcom "Roc", which starred Charles Dutton. Mr. Dutton played Charles's ornery father. The two men appeated together in August Wilson's The Piano Lesson on Broadway in 1990. In that play, Mr. Gordon played the part of Doaker, an uncle who has spent 27 years working on the railroads, a perormance he repeated in the 1995 television film of the play.

He was born Rufus Carl Gordon, Jr. on Jan. 20, 1932 in Goochland,VA. and gew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, NY. Mr. Gordon was a long time coming to his acting debut. After four years in the air force, an incomplete stint at Brooklyn College and two divorces, Mr. Gordon was employed in such dead-end capacities as a sheet-metal worker and department stockroom clerk. Mr. Gordon made his Broadway debut in as a replacement actor in The Great White Hope. Soon after, he appeared in the 1971 musical Aint Supposed to Die a Natural Death. In addition, he played Cutler, the trombonist, in the 2003 revival in Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom with Dutton and Whoopi Goldberg. He also appeard in many plays at the Negro Ensemble Company.

Source: Playbill.com