“Grandfather of Rock n Roll“
I cannot tell you whether Louis Jordan saw the future or not, but he definitely made it happen.
He is “the father of Rhythm and Blues” and “the Grandfather of Rock n Roll”. Biographer Steven Koch also cites him as an early influence on the development of “reggae, ska, and rocksteady”. He produced 59 charting singles between 1942 and 1951 spanning the race, pop, and country charts. Jordan laid the blueprint for the music for the latter half of the twentieth century. Artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Ray Charles would not exist without him.
Louis Jordan was born on July 8, 1908 in Brinkley, Arkansas. His formative years were spent playing different horns in the backyard of his grandmother’s home in Binkley. His first instrument was the trombone but he had to give it up because his grandmother couldn’t stand the noise and because his arms were too short to play it.
When Jordan became proficient with the clarinet and later the saxophone his father, James Jordan of Dardanelle, recruited him to play in different minstrel troupes. James was a student of W.C. Handy’s, Father of the Blues, establishing Louie in the direct lineage from the earliest forms of popular blues to the Rock n Roll artists who took it global.
In the minstrel shows, Jordan developed a musical skillset that would become the backbone of his unique blend of popular jazz and southern music: humor, showmanship, musical efficiency, and the prioritization of popular appeal over artistic pretension.
The most notable of these minstrel shows was the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. This company also produced artists like Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Rufus Thomas. It familiarized Louis with the Chitlin Circuit and put him in front of future Circuit icons like fellow Arkansan, Bobby Rush. Rush associates Louis with the development of “funk-blues”, whose characteristics are distinguished from the tragic blues ballads and more similar to the hopped-up sexual energy of Rock n Roll.
The delta region’s influence on Louis is mostly responsible for his laying the foundation for Rock n Roll. He said that his most profitable songs were “based on the 12-bar blues”. However, it was Louis’ combination of rural music and big band jazz that gave him the ability to swing to the top of the charts and capture the ears of black and white audiences nationwide.
In 1929, he made the jump from Arkansas to the east coast where he began collaborating with artists like Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald and playing iconic venues like the Apollo and the Savoy Theater. However, in between the Delta and the East Coast, Louis spent his time playing in other regions of Arkansas, in El Darado, Smakover, Little Rock, and most importantly, Hot Springs.
These places must have been radically different environments for Louis to play. He was attracted to South Arkansas by the oil boom of the 1920s. There was money to be made. Once the oil dried up, he and his band moved to Hot Springs.
It is difficult to find any information about the music in Hot Springs at the time. What I do know is that the likes of Count Basie (New Jersey), Cab Calloway (New York), and Duke Ellington (Washington DC) played the Union Building in Hot Springs. These band-stand superstars were there entertaining white celebrities like Al Capone and Babe Ruth who probably found this familiar style more relatable and perhaps enjoyable than the blues native to the south.
It is likely that in Hot Springs Louis began to combine the popular jazz aesthetic with the vivacity of jump blues. Koch notes that he spent his time in Hot Springs “obsessively listening to the radio and other bands” which “paid off on the bandstand”. However, Louis made sure his brand was unique by incorporating blues structures and novelty humor as well as keeping his songs compact enough to keep the everyman from getting bored.
While I would like to cite Arkansas’s influence on Louis as his rearing in the blues in the delta, it is hard for any one state to claim that place. The culture that exists in the corners of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas deserves its own political borders.
What Arkansas really gave Jordan was exposure to a cosmopolitan audience, comprised of movers and shakers from other parts of the country, most notably the urban Northeast. Something that would enable Louis to package southern jump music in glossy stylistics that broader audiences could digest easily. Louis’ sound became so popular that it was exported to troops on the front line in World War II and had its own films created to showcase the music and Louis’ insatiable appeal as an entertainer. Needless to say, he received unprecedented exposure on the radio as well.
It was Louis’ media distribution that planted the seeds that would germinate Rock n Roll. Louis’ iconic song “Caldonia” was the first secular song Little Richard ever heard. Steven Koch writes:
“That made sense, as Louie’s “Cal-don-YAH!” shriek sounds eerily like the vocal tone Little Richard would adopt and patent to great chart success a decade later—as well as Little Richard’s Jordan-style pencil-thin moustache.”
Louis also had an influence on the fundamental structure of Rock n Roll. When he went solo, he had to whittle down his band to five musicians due to financial restraints. Although this was a fraction of the elements the big bands were performing with, The Tympany Five still drew crowds by the thousands and even outsold their competition. This set a precedent in the music business that proved the public was willing to pay the same amount to see a small group as they were to see larger ensembles. And, because there were fewer musicians involved, everyone walked away with more money too.
Due to the small size of the band, more responsibilities fell on Jordan. Where a big band would typically have an arranger, vocalist, dancers, and instrumental soloists, Louis was forced to be all in one. The audience’s attention was focused on one individual during the show thus creating the captivating persona of the front man. Warren Bebee writes the everyone from Elvis Presley to Janis Joplin to Ozzy Osbourne are indebted to Louis.
Although it is said that Louis did not drink or take other drugs, he, like the frontmen who followed him, had at least one addiction: women (and maybe more). He married five women in his life. Fleecie Moore, his childhood sweetheart, literally stabbed him in the back over royalties. Ida Fields, who helped guide Louis through his transition from Hot Springs to the east coast, had a diamond inserted into one of her front teeth. During their time in Philadelphia, Ida once caught Louis in the act of doing a striptease at an afterhours drag bar. She is later quoted saying “he was a little bit gay…I know so”.
For the purposes of this blog, what we really owe Louis for is adding “a little grit” to big band sound and “paving the way for the staccato, honking, screaming style” that would characterize the earliest forms of Rock n Roll music. Louis trimmed the lace and excessive frills of the popular music and injected it with the energies of jump-blues and vernacular humor. Without him, white America would not have been prepared for Rock n Roll. Ironically, it was the swing elements of his sound that would make him obsolete in the fifties when the more vulgar and brash form took hold of the country.
There is so much more to discuss about Louis’ life and art. Particularly, the complex social and political implications of his lyrics as well as his influence on jazz. You can check out this interview with Professor Adam Green and David Ake’s book Jazz Cultures for more information on these topics.
I’ve included links to three of Louis’ songs which showcase the width and depth of his music below: “Beans and Cornbread”, “What’s the use of getting sober”, and a bebop infused version of “Caldonia” from a TV appearance Louis made in the waning years of his career.
It may not be often that you encounter Louis’ own songs in contemporary culture, but next time you hear a Chuck Berry guitar solo, or a Little Richard howl, you better remember Louis Jordan’s name.
“What’s the Use of Getting Sober”
“Caldonia”-Late Career
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