Louis Jordan

Louis Jordan (July 8, 1908 - February 4, 1975) was a pioneering and hugely influential African-American jazz 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 post-swing era and who, alongside Nat "King" Cole, became one of the first major black artists whose popularity crossed over into the mainstream white audience and who scored hits on both the "race" and mainstream (white) pop charts.

Jordan scored at least four million-selling hits during his career, and as well as writing or co-writing songs that have become 20th century popular music classics, Jordan and his dynamic Tympany Five bands (which pioneered the use of electric guitar and electric organ) largely 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 that presaged virtually all of the dominant black music styles of the 1950s and 1960s.

Early life

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.

Career in 1930s

In 1932, Jordan began performing with Clarence Williams. He was a member of the influential band of Chick Webb from 1936 to 1938, at the time when the young Ella Fitzgerald was coming to the fore as the band's lead singer. After Webb's sudden death following an operation, Fitzgerald took over the band and Jordan went solo.

Jordan's first recording under his own name was "Honey in the Bee Ball" for Decca Records in 1938. Though this was recorded as The Elks Rendezvous Band, Jordan eventually changed the name to the Tympany Five due to the fact that his original drummer often used tympany drums.

The various lineups of the Tympany Five (which often featured two or three extra players) included Bill Jennings and Carl Hogan on guitar, pianist-arrangers Wild Bill Davis and Bill Doggett, "Shadow" Wilson and Chris Columbus on drums and Dallas Bartley on bass. Jordan played alto sax and sang. (The word tympany is an old-fashioned one meaning, "swollen, inflated, puffed-up", etymologically related to timpani, or "kettle drum", but historically separate.)

The band's sound was similar to that of Fats Waller and his Rhythm with a touch of the Caribbean sound commonly called "the Spanish tinge".

Career in 1940s

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. 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 (split across both sides of a 78) which arguably crystallises the basic rock'n'roll format that was exploited with such success by Bill Haley and Elvis Presley a few years later. With its distictive comical-adventure narrative style, it sets out the same basic narrative framework that Bob Dylan employed in his classic "story" songs like "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" and "Tombstone Blues".

Loaded with wry social commentary and coded references, and often so risqué that even now it seems remarkable that some sides were issued at all, 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.

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 apperances on The Goon Show.

Most successful period

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 record in the 1946 Tom & Jerry cartoon short Solid Serenade.

Jordan also placed another 15+ songs on the national charts. However, Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five was the dominant behemoth on the 1940's R&B charts (or as they were known at the time, the "juke box race" charts.) There, Jordan had 18 #1 singles, 54 Top Tens, and an incredible 113 weeks in the #1 position (the all-time runner-up is Stevie Wonder with 70). From July 1946 through May 1947, Jordan scored five consecutive #1 songs, holding the top slot for 44 consecutive weeks.

Influence on Rock and Roll

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 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."

Decline of popularity

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.

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 his own songs, he did not benefit financially from many of them. Many of his self-penned biggest hits, including "Caledonia Boogie" were credited to Jordan's then wife Fleecie More as a means of avoiding an existing publishing arrangement. The marriage was acrimonious and shortlived -- on two occasions, More 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 -- although he is credited as the co-writer of "Saturday Night Fish Fry", Tympany Five pianist Bill Doggett later claimed that he had written the song.

Tribute show

The Broadway show, Five Guys Named Moe was devoted to Jordan's music. The Bear Family label in Germany has released a 9-CD collection of Jordan's work.

Samples

• Download sample of "Caldonia"

External link

LouisJordan.com