Louis Thomas Jordan was an American saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and bandleader who was popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s.
41 Facts About Louis Jordan
2.
Louis Jordan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an "early influence" in 1987.
3.
Louis Jordan was a talented singer with great comedic flair, and fronted his own band for more than twenty years.
4.
Louis Jordan duetted with some of the biggest solo singing stars of his time, including Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.
5.
Louis Jordan appeared in 14 three-minute Soundies filmed for "movie jukeboxes" of the 1940s.
6.
Louis Jordan worked as a specialty act in the Hollywood theatrical features Follow the Boys and Swing Parade of 1946.
7.
Louis Jordan began his career in big-band swing jazz in the 1930s, but he became known as an innovative popularizer of jump blues, a swinging, up-tempo, dance-oriented hybrid of jazz, blues and boogie-woogie.
8.
Louis Jordan was one of the first black recording artists to achieve significant crossover in popularity with the predominantly white mainstream American audience, having simultaneous Top Ten hits on the pop charts on several occasions.
9.
Louis Jordan was born on July 8,1908, in Brinkley, Arkansas.
10.
Louis Jordan's father, James Aaron Jordan, was a music teacher and bandleader for the Brinkley Brass Band and the Rabbit Foot Minstrels.
11.
Louis Jordan was raised by his grandmother Maggie Jordan and his aunt Lizzie Reid.
12.
Louis Jordan recorded with Clarence Williams and briefly was a member of the Stuff Smith orchestra.
13.
Louis Jordan appeared on many Jubilee radio shows and a series of programs for the Armed Forces Radio for distribution to American troops overseas.
14.
Louis Jordan's career was uninterrupted by the draft except for a four-week Army camp tour.
15.
Louis Jordan recorded with Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, and Louis Armstrong and appeared in films.
16.
From July 1946 through May 1947, Louis Jordan had five consecutive number one songs, holding the top slot for 44 consecutive weeks.
17.
Louis Jordan's popularity was boosted not only by his hit Decca records but by his prolific recordings for Armed Forces Radio and the V-Disc transcription program, which helped to make him popular with whites and blacks.
18.
Louis Jordan starred in short musical films and made "soundies" for his hit songs.
19.
Louis Jordan was certainly a significant figure in the development of rhythm and blues.
20.
In 1952, Louis Jordan performed on June 1 at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles for the eighth Cavalcade of Jazz concert produced by Leon Hefflin, Sr.
21.
Louis Jordan signed with Aladdin for which he recorded 21 songs in early 1954.
22.
In 1955, he recorded with "X" Records, a subsidiary of RCA which changed its name to Vik Records while Louis Jordan was with them.
23.
In 1956, Mercury signed Louis Jordan and released two albums and a handful of singles.
24.
Louis Jordan later expressed his dislike of rock 'n' roll and commented "A lot of companies have asked me to record, but they insisted that I go into rock 'n' roll, and I didn't want to change my style".
25.
Louis Jordan didn't make you feel small, but he was just so perfect in what he did.
26.
Louis Jordan's music appealed to both African American and white audiences, and he had broad success with hit songs like "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby".
27.
In 1932, Louis Jordan met Ida Fields, a Texas-born singer and dancer, in Hot Springs.
28.
Louis Jordan claimed she was aware that he was still married.
29.
Louis Jordan began billing herself as "Mrs Louis Jordan, Queen of the Blues, and her Orchestra" before Jordan stopped it by stalling payments.
30.
In 1942, Louis Jordan married his childhood sweetheart, Fleecie Moore; they were later divorced.
31.
In 1947, Fleecie discovered Louis Jordan was having an affair with dancer Florence "Vicky" Hayes and attacked him with a knife.
32.
Louis Jordan married Vicky on November 14,1951, in Providence, Rhode Island; they separated in 1960.
33.
Louis Jordan married Martha Weaver, a singer and dancer from St Louis, in 1966.
34.
Weaver being a Catholic, Louis Jordan sometimes attended Mass with her on Sundays, though he was raised a Baptist.
35.
Musician Ike Turner stated in his autobiography, Takin' Back My Name, that he heard about his tax problems and contacted Louis Jordan's booking agency in Chicago.
36.
Louis Jordan wrote or co-wrote many of the songs he performed, but he did not benefit financially from them.
37.
Louis Jordan died of a heart attack on February 4,1975, in Los Angeles.
38.
James Brown and Ray Charles said that Louis Jordan's style had an influence on their work.
39.
Louis Jordan was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame; and in 2018 he posthumously received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement.
40.
Louis Jordan helped make jump blues, jazz and boogie-woogie mainstream forces.
41.
In 1990, Five Guys Named Moe, a musical built around the songs of Louis Jordan, opened in London's West End and ran for over four years, winning a Laurence Olivier Award.