About Louis Jordan
Hometown
Brinkley, AR, United States
Born
July 8, 1908
Genre
Jazz
Born in Brinkley, Arkansas, in 1908, saxophonist, singer, bandleader, and composer Louis Jordan remains one of the most influential progenitors in American popular music. As a teen he learned clarinet and saxophone from his father, who featured him in his Rabbit Foot Minstrels. Jordan headed east in the early 1930s, working in bands led by Chick Webb, Charlie Gaines, and Stuff Smith before starting his own Tympany Five in New York in 1938 and forging a driving strain of early rhythm ’n’ blues with the instrumental fluency of jazz. After moving to Los Angeles in 1942, Jordan’s fame grew through soundies, proto-music video films featuring his mischievous charisma and humorous stage presence. He craftily enfolded then-popular Afro-Caribbean styles like calypso and son into a horn-driven R&B context, where he delivered comedic, often topical narratives riddled with double entendres. Throughout the 1940s he maintained a consistent presence on the R&B charts—landing No. 1 singles like “Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens” and “Jack, You’re Dead”—while also turning up on the pop charts. With the advent of rock ’n’ roll in the mid-'50s, the music Jordan helped foment eclipsed his popularity, and while he continued to tour and record, he never enjoyed his early success again. Since his death from a heart attack in 1975, his importance has been gradually recognized, and his music reached a new audience in the early 1990s thanks to the hit musical Five Guys Named Moe.
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