Rock 'n' Roll Call
Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five
Bluebird/BMG Records
Reviewed by Norm Dixon
The greatest myth in modern popular music folklore is that what has become known as "rock 'n' roll" was suddenly "invented" by a motley collection of southern white "crackers" in a small Memphis recording studio in the early 1950s.
While rock and roll's evolution is much more complex than can be traced in this short review, if one person can be held most responsible for this most momentous development in music, it is the great jump blues master Louis Jordan.
With a long-running stage show dedicated to his music playing in London and New York — soon to open in Melbourne — a song ("Beans and Cornbread") on the soundtrack of Spike Lee's Malcolm X, and a rash of recent reissues of his classic and lesser known numbers, Jordan's importance is beginning to be more widely acknowledged.
Born in Arkansas in 1908, Jordan joined the Rabbit Foot Minstrels when he was 12. He played with, and learned from, the great blues singer Ma Rainey. He then studied music at Arkansas Baptist College and joined the Charlie Gaines Orchestra, which accompanied Louis Armstrong during recordings made in 1932.
He played alto sax in 1936 with the Chick Webb big band, which featured the newly discovered teenage sensation Ella Fitzgerald. Determined to make it as a vocalist in his own right, Jordan quit Webb's band in 1938 and formed what was to become the acclaimed Tympany Five (which rarely contained less than seven players).
Jordan's swing-derived music heavily emphasised an up-
tempo blues which featured increasingly frenetic sax breaks, dance-friendly rhythms, highly entertaining stage antics and light-hearted lyrics. Jordan pioneered the trend to small combos, which was one of the single most influential factors in the development
of what was known, at first, as "jump blues", then "rhythm and blues" and finally, with minor variations and white acceptance, "rock 'n' roll".
R&B gained popularity in the early '40s in the midst of a tremendous radicalisation in the urban African American communities. It developed in parallel with the bebop revolution in jazz. Both streams evolved out of black musicians and audiences' frustration with the big band swing, now thoroughly debased and commercialised by the recording industry. Whereas bebop sought to satisfy the African American community's need for creative expression, R&B addressed their desire to forget the daily grind in the factories and mills and have a good time.
In 1941, the US government was forced to outlaw racial discrimination by government contractors after a mass march on Washington was threatened. Riots broke out in many urban areas throughout 1942 and 1943. There was a growing movement to emphasise black pride and identity. Jordan's first big hit — "I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town" — came in early 1942, just as Detroit erupted in rioting over a racist mob's attack on black families attempting to move into their new homes in a housing project.
Jordan became the biggest selling, most popular, black artist of the '40s. Between 1942 and 1952 he scored more than 50 top 10 hits on the segregated R&B charts, including 18 #1s, all on the Decca label. Nineteen songs made the white-dominated pop charts.
The war period was Louis Jordan's heyday. A series of songs tapped African Americans' cynicism about the sacrifices they had to make for the US "war for democracy" — "Ration Blues" in 1943, "GI Jive" and "You Can't Get That No More" in 1944 — and also struck a chord with young whites. "Ration Blues" made #11 on the pop charts and "GI Jive" rocketed to #1.
Decca in 1946 switched Jordan to their non-segregated pop label, and he immediately hit the charts with his classic "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie". It stayed there six months and held #1 for 18 weeks.
Unlike the most popular black pop artists of the day, who sang white songs in the style of white singers, Jordan and Tympany Five played in an unashamedly black style and sang in black jive lyrics that focused on subjects that the millions of black workers, recently arrived from the countryside, could identify with. Songs like "Beans and Cornbread", "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens", "Saturday Night Fish Fry", "Barnyard Boogie" and "Blue Light Boogie" were steeped in a humorous pride of black culture, identity and experience.
Louis Jordan was responsible for writing or popularising songs that are now considered part of the basic rock and roll repertoire, such as "Caledonia" (1945), "Let the Good Times Roll" (1946), "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie" (1946) and "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby" (1943), to name just a few. It comes as no surprise to learn that an obscure hillbilly by the name of Bill Haley studied closely the Tympany Five sound, especially "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie". The sound of Haley, often lauded as the "inventor" of rock 'n' roll, and his Comets was further refined by Jordan's own producer, Milt Gabler.
Leaving Decca in 1954 when the company decided he would no longer deliver top sellers, Jordan cut sides with Aladdin, RCA, Mercury, Ray Charles' Tangerine, and Black and Blue. Which brings us to his RCA recordings collected on Rock 'n' Roll Call. These 12 tracks, recorded in 1955 and 1956, are thoroughly enjoyable and groove along well, apart from a real stinker entitled "Whatever Lola Wants".
Yet these songs are not up to the quality of the recordings Jordan made during his Decca years or later sides recorded on the Mercury label between 1956 and 1958. The RCA recordings lack the rootsy raucousness and spontaneousness of those other tracks.
Louis Jordan died in 1975. For more than a decade his mammoth contribution to popular music was largely forgotten. With the recent surge in interest in his life and work, Jordan's pivotal role in rock and roll is finally being celebrated.