Louis Thomas Jordan was an American jazz, blues and jump blues saxophonist, vocalist, songwriter and bandleader who was popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "the King of the Jukebox", he earned his highest profile towards the end of the swing era.
real name: Louis Thomas Jordan
labels: Decca, Mercury Records, Aladdin Records
genres: jazz, blues
awards: Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame, Arkansas Black Hall of Fame
plays: saxophone, voice, clarinet
member of: Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five
Facts from Wikidata and Discogs, free to use.
Jordan was born on July 8, 1908, in Brinkley, Arkansas. His father, James Aaron Jordan, was a music teacher and bandleader for the Brinkley Brass Band and the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. His mother, Adell, died when Louis was young and his grandmother Maggie Jordan and his aunt Lizzie Reid raised him. Under the tutelage of his father, Jordan began studying clarinet at age seven, then saxophone. In his teens, he joined the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. He studied at Arkansas Baptist College, where he majored in music.
By the late 1920s Jordan was playing professionally. In the early 1930s, he played in Philadelphia and New York City with Charlie Gaines, as well as recording with Clarence Williams and his Blue Rhythm Boys and was briefly a member of the Stuff Smith orchestra. With Chick Webb's orchestra, he sang and played alto saxophone. In 1938, he started a band that recorded a year later as the Tympany Five.
On June 23, 2008, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution introduced by Arkansas Representative Vic Snyder honoring Jordan on the centenary of his birth.
Are you them, or do you know them? The mail slot is open.
"Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby" is a song written by Louis Jordan and Billy Austin. The song's first recording, by Jordan, was made on October 4, 1943.
It was released as the B-side of a single with "G.I. Jive" with the title "Is You Is or Is You Ain't ".
In the 1932 American film Harlem Is Heaven, dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, accompanied by jazz pianist Putney Dandridge, sings "Is You Is or Is You Ain't." The song in the film has different lyrics, but, in addition to its title, its melody is at times similar to that later used for "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby."
"Jack, You're Dead" is a song written by Dick Miles and Walter Bishop. It was performed by Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five, recorded in October 1946, and released on the Decca label.
The song describes a man's physical state if he fails to respond to romance.