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Louis Jordan

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Performers and composers

   Louis Jordan swinging on sax, Paramount Theatre, NYC, 1946 (Photo:
   William P. Gottlieb)
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   Louis Jordan swinging on sax, Paramount Theatre, NYC, 1946
   (Photo: William P. Gottlieb)

   Louis Jordan ( July 8, 1908 – February 4, 1975) was a pioneering
   American jazz, blues and rhythm & blues musician and songwriter who
   enjoyed his greatest popularity from the late 1930s to the early 1950s.
   Known as The King of the Jukebox, Jordan was highly popular with both
   black and white audiences in the later years of the swing era.

Overview

   Although he began his career in big band swing jazz in the 1930s',
   Louis Jordan became famous as one of the leading practitioners and
   popularisers of " jump blues", a swinging, up-tempo, dance-oriented
   hybrid of jazz, blues and boogie-woogie. Often performed by smaller
   bands (typically five or players), jump music featuring shouted, highly
   syncopated vocals and earthy, comedic lyrics on contemporary urban
   themes. Musically it placed strong emphasis on the rhythm section of
   piano, bass and drums, which (from the mid-1940s on) was often
   augmented by electric guitar.

   After Duke Ellington and Count Basie, Louis Jordan was probably the
   most popular and successful black bandleader of his day, but in
   contrast almost all of his colleagues (black or white) he was a major
   personality in his own right, an all-round entertainer of enormous and
   diverse accomplishments.

   He was a talented singer with great comedic flair, and he fronted his
   own band for more than twenty years. He was also an actor and a major
   black film personality, appearing in dozens of "soundies" (promotional
   film clips), making numerous cameos in mainstream features and short
   films, and starring in two musical feature films made especially for
   him. He was an instrumentalist who specialised in the alto saxophone
   but played all forms of the instrument, as well as piano and clarinet.
   He was a productive composer, and many of the songs he wrote or
   co-wrote are now acknowledged as 20th-century popular classics.

   Jordan is notable in the history of American popular music for being
   one of the first black recording artists who achieved a significant
   "crossover" in popularity into the mainstream, (predominantly white)
   American audience, and he was one of the first black artists to score
   hits on both the (black) "race" charts and the mainstream (white) pop
   chart, and he duetted with almost some of the biggest solo singing
   stars of his day, including Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald. Jordan is
   acknowledged as one of the most successful African-American musicians
   of the 20th century, ranking fifth in the list of the all-time most
   successful black recording artists. He scored at least four
   million-selling hits during his career, regularly topping the "race"
   charts, as well as scoring simultaneous Top Ten hits on the white pop
   charts on several occasions.

   With his dynamic Tympany Five bands -- which also pioneered the use of
   electric guitar and electronic organ -- Jordan mapped out the main
   parameters of the classic R&B, urban blues and early rock'n'roll genres
   with a series of hugely influential 78 rpm discs for the Decca label
   that presaged virtually all of the dominant black music styles of the
   1950s and 1960s and which exerted a huge influence on many leading
   performers in these genres.

Early life and musical career

   Louis Jordan was born in Brinkley, Arkansas, where his father was a
   local music teacher and bandleader. Jordan started out on clarinet, and
   also played piano professionally early in his career, but alto
   saxophone became his main instrument. However, he became even better
   known as a songwriter, entertainer and vocalist.

   In 1932, Jordan began performing with the band of Clarence Williams. In
   late 1936 he was invited to join the influential orchestra led by
   drummer Chick Webb. Based at New York's Savoy Ballroom, Webb's
   orchestra was renowned as one of the very best big bands of its day and
   they regularly beat all comers at the Savoy's legendary " cutting
   contests". Jordan worked with Webb until 1938; and it proved a vital
   stepping stone in his career -- Webb (who was physically disabled) was
   a fine musician but not a great showman. The ebullient Jordan often
   introduced songs as he began singing lead; he later recalled that many
   in the audience took him to be the band's leader, which undoubtedly
   boosted his confidence further. This was the same period when the young
   Ella Fitzgerald was coming to prominence as the Webb band's lead female
   vocalist; she and Jordan often duetted on stage and they would later
   reprise the partnership on several records, by which time both artists
   were major stars.

   Jordan left the Webb band in 1938, by which time Webb was already
   seriously ill with tuberculosis of the spine. Webb died after a spinal
   operation on 16 June 1939, aged only 30; following his death, Ella
   Fitzgerald took over the band.

Early solo career

   Jordan's first band, drawn mainly from members of the Jesse Stone band,
   was originally a nine-piece, but he soon scaled it down to a sextet
   after landing a residency at the Elks Rendezvous club at 464 Lenox
   Avenue in Harlem. The original lineup of the sextet was Jordan (saxes,
   vocals), Courtney Williams (trumpet), Lem Johnson (tenor sax), Clarence
   Johnson (piano), Charlie Drayton (bass) and Walter Martin (drums).

   The new band's first recording date for Decca Records (on 20 December
   1938) produced three sides on which they backed an obscure vocalist
   called Rodney Sturgess, and two novelty sides of their own, "Honey in
   the Bee Ball" and "Barnacle Bill The Sailor". Though these were
   credited to The Elks Rendezvous Band, Jordan subsequently changed the
   name to the Tympany Five due to the fact that Martin often used tympany
   drums in performance. (The word tympany is also an old-fashioned
   colloquial term meaning "swollen, inflated, puffed-up", etymologically
   related to timpani, or "kettle drum", but historically separate.)

   The various lineups of the Tympany Five (which often featured two or
   three extra players) included Bill Jennings and Carl Hogan on guitar,
   renowned pianist-arrangers Wild Bill Davis and Bill Doggett, "Shadow"
   Wilson and Chris Columbus on drums and Dallas Bartley on bass. Jordan
   played alto, tenor and baritone saxophone and sang the lead vocal on
   most numbers. The band's sound was similar to that of Fats Waller and
   his Rhythm, but with a touch of the Caribbean sound commonly called
   "the Spanish tinge".

   Their next recording date in March 1939 produced five sides including
   "Keep A-Knockin'" (originally recorded in the 1920s and later covered
   famously by Little Richard), "Sam Jones Done Snagged His Britches" and
   "Doug the Jitterbug". Lem Johnson subsequently left the group, and was
   replaced by Stafford Simon. Sessions in December 1939 and January 1940
   produced two more early Jordan classics, "You're My Meat" and "You Run
   Your Mouth and I'll Run My Business". Other members who passed through
   the band during 1940 and 1941 included tenorist Kenneth Hollon (who
   recorded with Billie Holiday); trumpeter Freddie Webster (from Earl
   Hines' band) was part of the nascent bebop scene at Minton's Playhouse
   and he influenced Kenny Dorham and Miles Davis.

   In 1941 Jordan signed with the General Artists Corporation agency, who
   appointed Berle Adams as Jordan's agent. Adams secured an engagement at
   Chicago's Capitol Lounge, supporting The Mills Brothers, and this
   proved to be an important breakthrough for Jordan and the band.

   The Capitol Lounge residency also provides a remarkable yardstick of
   the scale of Jordan's success. During this engagement, the group was
   paid the standard union scale of US$70 per week -- $35 per week for
   Jordan and $35 split between the rest of the band. Just seven years
   later, when Jordan played his record-breaking season at the Golden Gate
   Theatre in San Francisco during 1948, he reportedly grossed over
   US$70,000 in just two weeks.

   During this period bassist Henry Turner was sacked and replaced by
   Dallas Bartley. This was followed by another important engagement at
   the Fox Head Tavern in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Working in the looser
   environment of Cedar Rapids, away from the main centres, the band was
   able to develop the novelty aspect of their repertoire and performance.
   Jordan later identified his stint at the Fox Head Tavern as the turning
   point in his career, and it was also while there that he found several
   songs that became early hits including "If It's Love You Want, Baby",
   "Ration Blues" and "Inflation Blues".

   In April 1941 Decca launched the Sepia Series, a 35-cent line that
   featured artists who were considered to have the "crossover potential"
   to sell in both the black and white markets, and Jordan's band was
   transferred from Decca's "race" label to the Sepia Series. alongside
   The Delta Rhythm Boys, the Nat King Cole Trio, Buddy Johnson and the
   Jay McShann Band.

   By the time the group returned to New York in late 1941, the lineup had
   changed to Jordan, Bartley, Martin, trumpeter Eddie Roane and pianist
   Arnold Thomas. Recording dates in November 1941 produced another early
   Jordan classic, "Knock Me A Kiss", which became a significant jukebox
   seller, although it did not make the charts. However Roy Eldridge
   subsequently recorded a version, backed by the Gene Krupa band, which
   became a hit in June 1942, almost a year after the Jordan recording
   came out; it was also covered by Jimmie Lunceford.

   These sessions also produced Jordan's first big-selling record, "I'm
   Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town", originally recorded by Casey Bill
   Weldon in 1936, although again it did not make the charts. It too was
   covered by Lunceford, in 1942, whose version reached #12 on the pop
   charts, and it was also covered by Big Bill Broonzy and Jimmy Rushing.

   Sessions in July 1942 produced nine prime sides, allowing Decca to
   stockpile Jordan's recordings as a hedge against the American
   Federation of Musicians' recording ban. Declared the same month, it led
   to Jordan's enforced absence from the studio for the next year and it
   also (regrettably) prevented many seminal bebop performers from
   recording during one of the most crucial years of the genre's history.
   It had been imposed in order to secure royalty payments for union
   musicians for each record sold.

   "I'm Gonna Leave You on the Outskirts of Town" was an "answer record"
   to Jordan's earlier "I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town," but it
   became Jordan's first major chart hit, reaching #2 on Billboard's
   Harlem Hit Parade. His next side, "What's The Use of Gettin' Sober
   (When You're Gonna Get Drunk Again)" became Jordan's first #1 hit,
   reaching the top of the Harlem Hit Parade in December 1942. A
   subsequent side, "The Chicks I Pick Are Slender, Tender and Fine"
   reached #10 in January 1943.

   Their next major side, the comical call-and response number "Five Guys
   Named Moe" was one of the first recordings to solidify the fast-paced,
   swinging R&B style that became the Jordan trademark and it struck a
   chord with audiences, reaching #3 on the race charts in September 1943.
   The song was later taken as the title of a long-running stage show that
   paid tribute to Jordan and his music. The more conventional "That'll
   Just About Knock Me Out" also fared well, reaching #8 on the race
   charts and giving Jordan his fifth hit from the Decemebr 1942 sessions.

   In late 1942, just before the U.S. entered World War II, Jordan and his
   band relocated to Los Angeles, working at major venues there and in San
   Diego. While in L.A., Jordan began making " soundies, the earliest
   precursors of the modern music video genre, and he also appeared on
   many Jubilee radio shows and a series of programs made for the Armed
   Forces Radio for distribution to American troops overseas.

   Decca was one of the first labels to reach an agreement with the
   Musicians' Union and Jordan returned to recording in October 1943. At
   this session they recorded "Ration Blues", which dated from their Fox
   Head Tavern days, but which had become newly timely with the imposition
   of wartime rationing. It became Jordan's first crossover hit, charting
   on both the white and black pop charts. It was also a huge hit on the
   Harlem Hit Parade, where it spent six weeks at #1 and stayed in the Top
   Ten for a remarkable 21 weeks, and it reached #11 in the general
   "best-sellers" chart.

The Forties

   In the 1940s, Jordan released dozens of hit songs, including the
   swinging " Saturday Night Fish Fry" (one of the earliest and most
   powerful contenders for the title of " First rock and roll record"),
   "Blue Light Boogie", the comic classic "Ain't Nobody Here but Us
   Chickens", "Buzz Me," "Ain't That Just Like a Woman", and the
   multi-million seller "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie".

   One of his biggest hits was "Caldonia", with its energetic screaming
   punchline, banged out by the whole band, "Caldonia! Caldonia! What
   makes your big head so hard?" After Jordan's success with it, the song
   was also recorded by Woody Herman in a famous modern arrangement,
   including a unison chorus by five trumpets. Muddy Waters also cut a
   version. However, many of Jordan's biggest R&B hits were inimitable
   enough that there were no hit cover versions, a rarity in an era where
   poppish "black" records were rerecorded by white artists, and where
   many popular songs were released in multiple competing versions.

   Jordan's raucous recordings were also notable for their use of
   fantastical narrative. This is perhaps best exemplified on the
   freewheeling party adventure "Saturday Night Fish Fry", the two-part
   1950 hit that was split across both sides of a 78. It is arguably one
   of the earliest American recordings to include all the basic elements
   of the classic rock'n'roll genre (obviously exerting a direct influence
   on the subsequent work of Bill Haley) and it is certainly one of the
   first songs in popular music to use the word "rocking" in the chorus
   and to prominently feature a distorted electric guitar.

   Its distinctive comical adventure narrative is strikingly similar to
   the style later used by Bob Dylan in his classic "story" songs like
   "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" and "Tombstone Blues". "Saturday Night Fish
   Fry" is also notable for the fact that it dispenses with the customary
   instrumental chorus introduction, but its most prominent feature is
   Jordan's rapid-fire, semi-spoken vocal. His delivery, clearly
   influenced by his experience as a saxophone soloist, de-emphasises the
   vocal melody in favour of highly syncopated phrasing and the percussive
   effects of alliteration and assonance, and it is arguably one of the
   earliest examples in American popular music of the vocal stylings that
   eventually evolved into rap.

   Jordan's original songs joyously celebrated the ups and downs of
   African-American urban life and were infused with cheeky good humor and
   a driving musical energy that had a massive influence on the
   development of rock and roll. His music was popular with both blacks
   and whites, but lyrically, most of his songs were empahtically and
   uncompromisingly 'black' in their content and delivery.

   Loaded with wry social commentary and coded references, they are also a
   treasury of 1930s/40s black hipster slang, and through his records
   Jordan was probably one of the main popularisers of the slang term
   "chick" (woman). Sexual themes often featured strongly and some sides
   -- notably the saucy double entredre of "Show Me How To Milk The Cow"
   -- were so risqué that even now it seems remarkable that they were
   issued at all.

   Among Jordan's biggest fans were Little Richard and Chuck Berry, who
   clearly modelled his musical approach on Jordan's, changing the text
   from black life to teenage life, and subsituting cars and girls for
   Jordan's primary motifs of food, drink, money and girls. Jordan was
   also an obvious and substantial influence on British-based jump blues
   exponent Ray Ellington, who became famous through his appearances on
   The Goon Show.

   Jordan reached Number Four on Billboard Magazine's chart for R&B in
   1950 for a cover version of Ruth Brown's hit " Teardrops from My Eyes".

"King of the Jukeboxes"

   The prime of Louis Jordan's recording career, 1942-1950, was a period
   of segregation on the radio. Despite this he was able to score the
   crossover #1 single "G.I. Jive"/"Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby?" in
   1944, thanks in large part to his performance in the Universal film
   Follow the Boys. Two years later, MGM had its cartoon cat Tom lip-sync
   Jordan's recording of "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby?" in the 1946
   Tom & Jerry cartoon short Solid Serenade.

   Jordan also placed another more than a dozen songs on the national
   charts. However, Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five dominated the 1940's
   R&B charts, or as they were known at the time, the "race" charts. In
   this period Jordan scored a staggering eighteen #1 singles and
   fifty-four Top Ten placings. To this day Louis Jordan still ranks as
   the top black recording artist of all time in terms of the total number
   of weeks at #1 -- his records scored an incredible total of 113 weeks
   in the #1 position (the runner-up being Stevie Wonder with 70 weeks).
   From July 1946 through May 1947, Jordan scored five consecutive #1
   songs, holding the top slot for forty-four consecutive weeks.

   As well as his hit Decca sides, Jordan's popularity was further boosted
   by his prolific recordings for Armed Forces Radio and the V-Disc
   transcription program, which helped to broaden his popularity with
   white audiences. He also starred in filmed a series of short musicals,
   as well as making numerous " soundies" for his hit songs. The ancestor
   of the modern music video, "soundies" were short film clips designed
   for use in audio-visual jukeboxes. Jordan also had a cameo role in the
   Hollywood wartime musical Follow The Boys.

Influence on Popular Music

   Jordan is one of a number of seminal black performers who is often
   credited with, if not inventing rock and roll, certainly providing most
   of the building blocks for the music. He was the progenitor and
   foremost practictioner of the jump blues style, later to be followed by
   Roy Brown, Wynonie Harris, Tiny Bradshaw. etc. Jump blues was a direct
   precursor of rock 'n roll. Aside from the aforementioned influence on
   Chuck Berry and Little Richard, Jordan also strongly influenced Bill
   Haley & His Comets, whose producer, Milt Gabler, had also worked with
   Jordan and attempted to incorporate Jordan's stylings into Haley's
   music. Haley also honored Jordan by recording several of his songs,
   including "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie" (which Gabler co-wrote) and "Caldonia."

   James Brown has also specifically cited Jordan as a major influence
   because of his multi-faceted talent. In the 1992 documentary Lenny
   Henry Hunts The Funk, Henry asked Brown how Jordan had influenced him;
   Brown replied "Oh, in every way: he could sing, he could dance, he
   could play, he could act. He could do it all."

   Jordan's vocal style was arguably an important precursor to rap. His
   1947 track "Look Out (Sister)", entirely delivered as spoken rhyming
   couplets, can arguably be classified as one of the very first true
   "raps" in popular music. "Saturday Night Fish Fry" (1950) also features
   a rapid-fire, highly syncopated semi-spoken vocal delivery that is
   strongly reminiscent of the modern rap style.

Decline of popularity

   In 1951, Jordan put together a short-lived big band, at a time when big
   bands were on their way out ; this is considered the beginning of his
   commercial decline, even though he reverted to the Tympany Five format
   within a year. By the mid 1950s, Jordan's records were not selling as
   well as they used to and he began switching labels. At Mercury Records,
   Jordan managed to update his sound to full rock and roll with such
   non-charting songs as "Let the Good Times Roll" and "Salt Pork, West
   Virginia". After this, however, Jordan's popularity waned and he
   recorded only for a small following of enthusiasts. He seldom recorded
   at all after the early 1960s. Jordan died in Los Angeles, California
   from a heart attack on 4 February, 1975. He is buried at Mt. Olive
   Cemetery in his wife Martha's hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.

   During an interview late in life, Jordan made the controversial remark
   that rock and roll music was simply rhythm and blues music played by
   white performers, which contradicted the likes of Chuck Berry and
   Little Richard, both black artists playing what they considered to be
   rock and roll.

   Although Jordan wrote (or co-wrote) a large proportion of the songs he
   performed, he did not benefit financially from many of them. Many of
   his self-penned biggest hits, including "Caldonia" were credited to
   Jordan's then wife Fleecie Moore as a means of avoiding an existing
   publishing arrangement. The marriage was acrimonious and shortlived --
   on two occasions, Moore stabbed Jordan after domestic disputes, almost
   killing him the second time -- and after their divorce Fleecie retained
   ownership of the songs. However, Jordan was also apparently not above
   taking credit for songs written by others -- Jordan is credited as the
   co-writer of "Saturday Night Fish Fry", but Tympany Five pianist Bill
   Doggett later claimed that in fact he had written the song.

Hit singles

Tributes and collections

   There are many collections currently available, so this only mentions
   some of the most notable.

   The Broadway show, Five Guys Named Moe was devoted to Jordan's music
   and this title is given to both soundtrack (tribute) and original music
   collections.

   The Bear Family label in Germany has released a comprehensive 9-CD
   collection of Jordan's work (Let the Good Times Roll: the Complete
   Decca Recordings 1938-1954).

   The Proper Records label in the UK has also released a low priced 4-CD
   102 track compilation (Jivin' With Jordan) that includes all of
   Jordan's seminal work from his Decca years.

   Blues Guitarist B.B. King recorded an album called "Let The Good Times
   Roll-The Music of Louis Jordan"
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