Rock Hall Hall of Fame Honours Louis Jordan

Louis Jordan is the subject of the annual American music masters series, which runs from Oct. 3-10 1999

(AP) September 29 - Before there was Chuck Berry, there was Louis Jordan. Before there was B.B. King, there was Louis Jordan. Before there was Bill Haley, there was Louis Jordan. Without Jordan, the bandleader whose flamboyant performances, jump blues tunes and shuffle rhythms were a sensation during World War II, it's hard to imagine the rock 'n' roll era that followed having the same energy. That's why the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is honouring Jordan, who died of a heart attack in 1975 at age 66, by making him the subject of its annual American music masters series, which runs from Oct. 3-10.The rock hall plans to stage two tribute concerts for Jordan, along with an academic conference on his work and a screening of several short films in which Jordan starred.

"To me, he was one of the best," said King, who will perform at a tribute gig Monday and has recorded a new album of Jordan songs. "For one thing, he was a great musician. He was a good singer and a very clever man with lyrics. His music was always danceable but standing there listening to the lyrics, you'd laugh. I wanted to be like him."

Jordan was born July 8, 1908, in Brinkley, Ark., and picked up on music early from his father, the leader of a local brass band. Jordan, a skilled reed player best known as a saxophonist, played with his father's group but left his hometown before he was 20 to make his own way. He soon moved to Philadelphia and then New York, where he played with Charlie Gains and in Chick Webb's big band, which featured the up-and-coming Ella Fitzgerald. But it wasn't until he formed his own group that Jordan's career began to take off.

With his band, the Tympany Five, Jordan scored a staggering 57 hits on the rhythm and blues charts between 1942 and 1951 - 18 of which reached No. 1.
Among them were such classics as "Caldonia," "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby?" and "Choo-Choo Ch' Boogie." The bandleader often listened to pop music on the radio and told interviewers he was more interested in being a great entertainer than a jazz purist or a blues man. That may explain something about the innovative style that gave Jordan, who was black, overwhelming popularity across colour barriers at a time when America was still segregated.

Jordan's group was a stripped-down combo relative to the big bands of the day, but the Tympany Five took the swing of those big groups and infused it with a new intensity. On top of the beat was always a smooth vocal from the bandleader, often with a funny twist. As Jordan put it: "I jumped the blues." The end result was that when Jordan played in a town, the only bodies that weren't moving were in the cemetery. "The beat was always there, the rhythm was there, and everybody danced," recalled Berle Adams, Jordan's manager during his heyday.

Adams said Jordan could sell out 3,000-seat auditoriums at a time when only big bands accomplished such a feat. When Jordan planned his annual swing through the South, theatre owners would wait until they had booked the Tympany Five before reserving dates for other acts, his manager said.

Singer Ruth Brown, a rock hall inductee like Jordan, played her first show at Harlem's famed Apollo Theater with him in the late 1940s. Jordan was "energetic, just a ball of energy," Brown said. "Funny, comedic, but a classic musician respected by the best of musicians. Not only he could he intensify a rhythm tune but he had a marvellous way with a ballad."

Jordan's performance style is also captured in his films. Watching those productions now, it's easy to see his similarity to the rockers who followed in the 1950s. In one short film he plays "Caldonia," an up-tempo number with a boogie-woogie beat. When he reaches the chorus, Jordan throws his head back and shrieks "Caldonia! Caldonia! What makes your big head so hard?" - a move and a sound that's only a small jump away from Little Richard belting out "Lucille" or even James Brown exclaiming, "I feel good!"

Jordan's recording director, Milt Gabler, later worked with Bill Haley and acknowledged sharing some of his insights from the Jordan days with Haley's band, the Comets. Chuck Berry has said he identifies with Jordan more than any other performer and some of the silly humor in Berry's hits seem to spring from Jordan's songs. In the tune "Beware," Jordan talks over the music (B.B. King and Brown both say Jordan rapped long before there were rappers) as he doles out teasing advice to men on how to avoid marriage-minded women:

"If you go out for a walk/ and she just listens to you talk/ she's trying to hook you," Jordan tells the fellas. Later, he adds: "If her sister calls you brother/ you better get further." While he wasn't overtly political, Jordan's material sometimes snuck in a bit of social commentary. "Saturday Night Fish Fry" tells the story of a house party in New Orleans that ends up getting raided by the police.

While some of the images are humorous - "they was puttin' us in the (paddy) wagon like a potato sack" - there's also an edge of bitterness. The partygoers in the song are obviously black, while the police breaking up everybody's good time are white. "I didn't know we was breakin' the law," Jordan sang.

While his music may have been fun-loving, Jordan was rigid when it came to work habits and professionalism. He would call unscheduled rehearsals if he was unsatisfied with his band's performance, and required the group to wear sharp, matching outfits on stage. He paid his band well but would fire players who showed up for work drunk or high on drugs.

"He was a perfectionist. I remember a time we went to St. Louis and he had a pneumonia. He still went on stage like nothing was happening," said his wife, Martha Jordan. "When he came off, he almost collapsed. But he didn't miss a beat."

Friends said that Jordan was a pleasant but serious man out of the spotlight. He never drank, Adams said, adding his only vices were ice cream, nice shoes and "an eye for the ladies." In fact, Jordan was married five times.

At the end of his nine-year run of popularity, Jordan's career began to slow down. Adams had to quit as his manager for health reasons and the grind of relentless touring wore down Jordan, too. He split with his record company, Decca, and never again attained the same levels of success, although he still performed into the 1970s. His popularity has waxed and waned over the years, but Jordan's impact was too great to be forgotten.

New wave rocker Joe Jackson recorded a 1981 album made up largely of Jordan's material, and in the early 1990s the tribute musical "Five Guys Named Moe," its title taken from another Jordan hit, had a long run in London and on Broadway. More recently, Jordan's songs have popped up again because of a revival of swing dancing.

But the rock hall tribute seems particularly fitting to Mrs. Jordan.

"He was before the concept of rock 'n' roll," she said. "But everything they did had almost the same beat as Louis had. He was way before his time."

By JOHN AFFLECK Associated Press Writer.

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