Duke Jordan has left us

[Shawn]

This is one of my favorites.

I try to ignore the stories...and just focus on the fact that he was a VERY talented man who left some great musi c for us to enjoy.

Rest in Peace man.

[doubleM]

Yeah, it seems like there are a fair amount of "I heard he was an asshole" stories reaching the surface when someone dies. While there might be some anecdotal evidence to support these, I always cringe when I read them in an R.I.P. thread.

This is one of my favorites.

I try to ignore the stories...and just focus on the fact that he was a VERY talented man who left some great musi c for us to enjoy.

Rest in Peace man.

[king ubu]

Larry, the "Trio/Quintet" came out also on Savoy, yes? That's the same one? I played it last night, and "Summertime" is terrific! Moody, almost impressionist, pure beauty!

The tune for his wife and daughter is also very nice.

Plus the line up with tb/bari is not one heard that often, so the quintet does sound different from most comparable albums of the time... and Bert is a fine musician, not heard as often as he would deserve!

[Tony Pusey]

Played Blue Duke only the other evening- a very good record!

[AllenLowe]

great pianist, lyrical and soulful - I can add a bit of personal perspective to what Larry is indicating, as I got to know Jordan a little bit in the middle 1970s (maybe late, I don't quite remember the year) - he was living in St. Albans, Queens and playing at a little club out there - also did a concert at Cami Hall in NYC with Tommy Turrentine (!) on trumpet - this was one of the strangest evenings I've spent, as Turrentine played the entire set a quarter-tone sharp, and neither he nor Jordan seemed to be aware of this - Turrentine played well, if in another key - I interviewed Jordan, talked to him a bit, and he was quite touchy - just about anything you might say could set him off, so it was difficult. He did tell me that he'd lost the publishing for Jordu and was not seeing any money from it. I can also add, from what he told me and from what Evans himself confirmed a few years later, that Bill Evans greatly admired his playing and that the two did some informal playing/practicing together (never, unfortunately, recorded). Jordan seemed to consider himself more of a composer than a pianist though, of course, his great lyrical gifts on the keyboard belied this.

[Hardbopjazz]

There's one less note in the world. Thanks for all the great music you gave us.

[paul secor]

My world is better for having heard his music. Thanks, Mr. Jordan.

[brownie]

The music to the Roger Vadim's film 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960' (with Jeanne Moreau, Gérard Philppe, Botris Vian, etc...) is mostly remembered for the contribution by Thelonious Monk which remains unissued but the film soundtrack was a very impressive success.

The music was composed by Duke Jordan (he used the alias of Jack Marray for business reasons) and performed by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers with Lee Morgan and Barney Wilen. The composition 'No Problem' was a hit in France when the Blakey soundtrack was released.

[AllenLowe]

I don't want to start a fight here, but I always felt that Jordan was everything that John Lewis wanted to be, but was too self-consciously aiming at: straightforward and soulful yet lyrical, modern yet with a strong sense of the past. As a matter of fact, for all his bebop connections, Jordan's time sense was often very "old fashioned" - on the beat, very straight quarter notes. Of course, we shouldn't forget (and someone might have mentioned this already) his perfect intros on the Dial/Bird ballads like Don't Blame Me, Out of Nowhere, My Old Flame (I think he's on all those) -

[Larry Kart]

Larry, the "Trio/Quintet" came out also on Savoy, yes? That's the same one? I played it last night, and "Summertime" is terrific! Moody, almost impressionist, pure beauty!

The tune for his wife and daughter is also very nice.

Plus the line up with tb/bari is not one heard that often, so the quintet does sound different from most comparable albums of the time... and Bert is a fine musician, not heard as often as he would deserve!

Yes, that's the one. There's also an interesting latish (1987) Bert-led album with Jordan, Ray Drummond, Mel Lewis, Carmen Leggio, and Jerry Dodgion on Fresh Sound, "The Human Factor." It's a mixed bag -- recording quality is a rather claustrophobic, and balances are not ideal (Drummond is boomy, Lewis is distant, piano sounds brittle; date was recorded in someone's Long Island living room) -- but Jordan gets a lot of solo space and is in fine form, seemingly delighted to tackle material, mostly originals from arranger Ed Bonoff Jr., that is new to him. The leader and the too seldom heard Leggio are in fine form too. It's a nice changeup from Jordan's excellent string of Steeplechase albums, which are built around him and his own pieces for the most part.

Speaking of that Savoy/Denon Jordan, what a great trio drummer Blakey was! Too bad that aren't that many opprtunities to hear him in that context -- Jordan, Monk, Herbie Nichols, Horace Silver, who am I forgetting?

[Chuck Nessa]

Speaking of that Savoy/Denon Jordan, what a great trio drummer Blakey was! Too bad that aren't that many opprtunities to hear him in that context -- Jordan, Monk, Herbie Nichols, Horace Silver, who am I forgetting?

For starters, Randy Weston.

[AllenLowe]

seconding Larry on Carmen Leggio, a nice man and a great saxophonist -

[andybleaden]

Speaking of that Savoy/Denon Jordan, what a great trio drummer Blakey was! Too bad that aren't that many opprtunities to hear him in that context -- Jordan, Monk, Herbie Nichols, Horace Silver, who am I forgetting?

[Lazaro Vega]

That's an interesting idea, Allen, vis a vis Jordan and John Lewis. Read that Jordan is related to Teddy Wilson in terms of touch. And he was a prolific composer.

Will spin an hour of music featuring Duke Jordan this Sunday evening from 7 to 8 p.m. et. His solo version of "Summertime," as well as Jordan's recordings with Bird ("Bird of Paradise, "Embraceable You"), a Bird tribute band including Jackie McLean and Johnny Griffin ("Yardbird Suite"), then Tina Brooks ("Up Tight's Creek"), and Kenny Burrell ("Scotch Blues"). Two pieces with Stan Getz, Jordan and Jimmy Rainey, "Stella" and "Thanks For the Memory." The Brown/Roach, Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra and Karrin Allyson/Nancy King versions of "Jordu" are in there, too. www.bluelake.org

Have been listening to his brief but gem like solos with Gene Ammons (Jordan is on "Blues Up and Down" but there's no room to breath on that riot).

And the aforementioned Art Farmer disc has a companion recording of just the trio where Philly Joe Jones and Jordan are incredible. An unaccompanied Philly Joe knocks out the theme to "Ladybird" on brushes, and there's a 9 minute "Night In Tunisia" if memory serves.

[Larry Kart]

Blakey in piano trios -- also, I now see, Kenny Drew, Paul Bley, Bud Powell (Norgran, 1955). As far as I can tell, except for the Monk Black Lion material from 1971, an offshoot of the Giants of Jazz tour, the '55 Jordan date was the last time Blakey was in the studio as a piano trio sideman.

[brownie]

Duke Jordan's obituary in The New York Times today.

Duke Jordan, 84, Jazz Pianist Who Helped to Build Bebop, Dies

By Tim Weiner

Published: August 12, 2006

Duke Jordan, a pianist whose work with the saxophonist Charlie Parker endures in the jazz canon, died on Tuesday in Valby, Denmark, a suburb of Copenhagen. He was 84, and he had lived in self-imposed exile from the United States since 1978, continuing to perform in the musical tradition he helped create.

His death was confirmed by Alistair Thomson, a spokesman for the United States Embassy in Denmark.

Mr. Jordan was regarded as one of the great early bebop pianists. The sound that he helped to create in the postwar era was something new in the American landscape, and it remains a cornerstone of jazz.

His work with Parker, recorded for the Dial and Savoy labels, soared with a lilting intensity. It was hard-driving and lyrical, heady and heartfelt, said Ira Gitler, a jazz critic who heard Mr. Jordan and Parker in 1947, at the Onyx Club and the Three Deuces, two long-vanished nightclubs on West 52nd Street in Manhattan.

A handful of recordings from 1947 and 1948 featuring Parker, along with Miles Davis on trumpet, Mr. Jordan on piano and Max Roach on drums, are considered masterpieces. They include “Embraceable You,” “Crazeology,” and “Scrapple From the Apple.”

Mr. Jordan’s “beautifully apt introductions,” in the words of Phil Schaap, curator of Jazz at Lincoln Center, lasted only seconds. But they set the stage for three-minute explosions of creativity.

Bebop — its nonsense name often credited to the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie — was nothing like the orchestral jazz of the 1930’s, made for ballroom dancing. It was fast, furious, intricate and improvised. Musicians took the basic structures of the blues or standards like “I Got Rhythm” and turned them inside out, embellishing their chords with cascades of notes. In Mr. Jordan’s hands, the piano, freed from keeping metronomic time, became a fountain of melody and color.

In 1949 and the early 1950’s, Mr. Jordan recorded with groups led by the saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Stan Getz and Sonny Stitt, led his own quartet and performed at New York nightclubs and on national radio broadcasts. His work in the 1950’s sometimes embraced more of a blues and gospel feeling but never left the fundamentals of the bebop sound.

Classically trained, he had a gift for composing and teaching, and several of his works, including “Jor-du” and “No Problem,” remain jazz classics, Mr. Schaap said. Some of his compositions are also heard on the soundtrack of the 1959 version of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” directed by Roger Vadim and starring Jeanne Moreau.

Irving Sidney Jordan was born in New York at the dawn of the era of recorded jazz, on April 1, 1922. Before his 21st birthday he was playing piano in big bands, including the Savoy Sultans, the house orchestra at the Savoy Ballroom, in its day the world’s most famous dance hall. Gillespie once called the Savoy Sultans “the swingingest band there ever was.”

In 1952 he married the jazz singer Sheila Jordan, who often said that she loved Charlie Parker so much that she married his piano player. Their interracial marriage was unusual in the 1950’s, when segregation remained legal, and miscegenation was a crime in some states. The marriage did not last.

Ms. Jordan became a highly regarded performer whose career continues today. They had a daughter, Traci, who became a music promoter. He has no other known survivors.

Mr. Jordan, like many of his contemporaries, developed a heroin habit, Mr. Gitler said. By the mid-1960’s, he was reduced to driving a taxicab in New York. He rehabilitated himself in the 1970’s, and began a new life as a leader of trios and quartets in Copenhagen, where he settled permanently in 1978. He recorded more than 30 albums for the Danish label SteepleChase Records and performed in concerts and at jazz festivals worldwide.

“He never changed styles,” said Scott Yanow, a jazz historian. “He had been one of the very first pianists to pick up on the changes that bebop brought, breaking out of conventional song, which took jazz beyond dance music into something new.”

[Lazaro Vega]

Duke Jordan discography page: http://www.jazzdisco.org/jordan/cat/a/

[Kalo]

Unfailing melodic freshness.

As usual, Larry unfailingly puts his finger on the crux of the matter. Jordan's lyrical intros to the Parker recordings will live as long as jazz is remembered.

Sad news, but great thread. Just the kind of thing that sucked me into these forums in the first place. Keep it coming folks.

Now it's time for all of us to listen to Jazz's second-greatest "Duke."

[EKE BBB]

Steve Voce´s obituary for The Independent.

Duke Jordan

Pianist for Charlie Parker

Published: 19 August 2006

Irving Sidney "Duke" Jordan, pianist: born New York 1 April 1922;

married

1952 Sheila Dawson (one daughter; marriage dissolved); died Copenhagen

8

August 2006.

Duke Jordan will always be remembered for the lyrical beauty of the

eight-bar piano introductions that he played on some of Charlie

Parker's

most influential records. His inspiration, like Parker's, reached its

zenith

on their 1947 recording of "Embraceable You".

He played in Parker's quintet, which also included Miles Davis and Max

Roach, for over three years in an unusually stable period for the

group's

personnel. Jordan persevered in the band, although both Davis and Roach

hated the pianist for what they saw as his inability to blend into the

rhythm section. Parker's music was at its most radical and intoxicating

and

the young musicians had trouble keeping pace with him.

Jordan's first job was with a band at New York's World Fair in 1939.

His

early classical piano studies made it easy for him to switch to jazz

and his

early work showed the influence of Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum. Jordan

spent

a year with the Savoy Sultans and then played in swing groups including

the

"Horsecollar" Williams Septet and the Roy Eldridge big band. He played

piano

on some of Eldridge's finest records of the mid-Forties.

It was when he was playing at the Three Deuces in New York that he was

heard

by Parker and signed up for the quintet. With his reputation as a

tasteful

bebop pianist established with Parker, Jordan went on to work and

record

with bands led by some of the finest saxophonists, including Coleman

Hawkins, Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons and Stan Getz.

He recorded first with Getz in 1949 and became a regular member of the

Getz

quartet in 1952, replacing Horace Silver. This wasn't a happy time,

because

Getz gave Jordan few solos and the pianist had more rhythm section

difficulties, this time because Getz's guitar soloist Jimmy Raney also

played rhythm and, Jordan felt, obstructed the piano.

Duke Jordan left Getz in the spring of 1953 and rejoined Roy Eldridge

for

four months. Throughout the Fifties he played with a multitude of bebop

bands, often in the company of the baritone sax player Cecil Payne, a

close

friend. The two men went to Sweden with the trumpeter Rolf Ericson in

1956

for an exiguous tour which had them playing one-nighters for three

months

without a break. Drink- and drug- fuelled behaviour throughout the tour

led

to the four American musicians being warned to leave the country. In

the

Sixties, Jordan and Payne appeared in the revolutionary theatre

production

The Connection when the successful play about drug addiction toured

Europe.

In the late Sixties Jordan, brought down by the drug addiction that had

afflicted him since his days with Parker, left music and worked as a

taxi

driver. He came back as a pianist in 1972 to work with his trio and

returned

several times to Scandinavia. He toured Japan in 1976 and made several

albums there, and at home he also recorded with other leaders.

Bitter about what he saw as his neglect in his homeland, he moved

permanently to Copenhagen in 1978. This was a good move, for he was

much

appreciated in Europe and toured and worked regularly with his own trio

for

the rest of his days. He recorded with the expatriate Americans Chet

Baker

and Art Pepper and in 1959 wrote at least part of the score for Roger

Vadim's film Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Jordan claimed to have written

the

whole score and not to have been paid for his work. He made a brief

appearance in the film playing the piano.

From Denmark he resumed his worldwide travels and made tours of Japan

four

times during the Eighties. He recorded prolifically for the Danish

Steeplechase label and expanded his writing activities. One of his

earlier

compositions, "Jordu", became a bebop standard.

Steve Voce

Irving Sidney "Duke" Jordan, pianist: born New York 1 April 1922;

married

1952 Sheila Dawson (one daughter; marriage dissolved); died Copenhagen

8

August 2006.

Duke Jordan will always be remembered for the lyrical beauty of the

eight-bar piano introductions that he played on some of Charlie

Parker's

most influential records. His inspiration, like Parker's, reached its

zenith

on their 1947 recording of "Embraceable You".

He played in Parker's quintet, which also included Miles Davis and Max

Roach, for over three years in an unusually stable period for the

group's

personnel. Jordan persevered in the band, although both Davis and Roach

hated the pianist for what they saw as his inability to blend into the

rhythm section. Parker's music was at its most radical and intoxicating

and

the young musicians had trouble keeping pace with him.

Jordan's first job was with a band at New York's World Fair in 1939.

His

early classical piano studies made it easy for him to switch to jazz

and his

early work showed the influence of Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum. Jordan

spent

a year with the Savoy Sultans and then played in swing groups including

the

"Horsecollar" Williams Septet and the Roy Eldridge big band. He played

piano

on some of Eldridge's finest records of the mid-Forties.

It was when he was playing at the Three Deuces in New York that he was

heard

by Parker and signed up for the quintet. With his reputation as a

tasteful

bebop pianist established with Parker, Jordan went on to work and

record

with bands led by some of the finest saxophonists, including Coleman

Hawkins, Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons and Stan Getz.

He recorded first with Getz in 1949 and became a regular member of the

Getz

quartet in 1952, replacing Horace Silver. This wasn't a happy time,

because

Getz gave Jordan few solos and the pianist had more rhythm section

difficulties, this time because Getz's guitar soloist Jimmy Raney also

played rhythm and, Jordan felt, obstructed the piano.

Duke Jordan left Getz in the spring of 1953 and rejoined Roy Eldridge

for

four months. Throughout the Fifties he played with a multitude of bebop

bands, often in the company of the baritone sax player Cecil Payne, a

close

friend. The two men went to Sweden with the trumpeter Rolf Ericson in

1956

for an exiguous tour which had them playing one-nighters for three

months

without a break. Drink- and drug- fuelled behaviour throughout the tour

led

to the four American musicians being warned to leave the country. In

the

Sixties, Jordan and Payne appeared in the revolutionary theatre

production

The Connection when the successful play about drug addiction toured

Europe.

In the late Sixties Jordan, brought down by the drug addiction that had

afflicted him since his days with Parker, left music and worked as a

taxi

driver. He came back as a pianist in 1972 to work with his trio and

returned

several times to Scandinavia. He toured Japan in 1976 and made several

albums there, and at home he also recorded with other leaders.

Bitter about what he saw as his neglect in his homeland, he moved

permanently to Copenhagen in 1978. This was a good move, for he was

much

appreciated in Europe and toured and worked regularly with his own trio

for

the rest of his days. He recorded with the expatriate Americans Chet

Baker

and Art Pepper and in 1959 wrote at least part of the score for Roger

Vadim's film Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Jordan claimed to have written

the

whole score and not to have been paid for his work. He made a brief

appearance in the film playing the piano.

From Denmark he resumed his worldwide travels and made tours of Japan

four

times during the Eighties. He recorded prolifically for the Danish

Steeplechase label and expanded his writing activities. One of his

earlier

compositions, "Jordu", became a bebop standard.

Steve Voce

[mmilovan]

One of my favourite pianists, ever. Those early sessions with Miles and Bird would be incomplete without his playing. Miles didn't like him, and he told in his autobiography he taught Jordan to play piano...

[neveronfriday]

I saw Duke Jordan many times around Northern Europe. Always good, often great. One particular evening remains imprinted on my memory: a Ben Webster tribute concert (mid-80s, I think) in Copenhagen (as far as I recall with Clark Terry, Woode on bass and Svend-Erik Nørregaard (?) on drums). Afterwards he was quite talkative as opposed to other gigs at which he seemed to be rather withdrawn in conversations after the gig. A pleasant evening with Jordan being quite the gentleman.

P.S.: I think that concert was filmed (by DR 1?) and maybe released somewhere? I never saw it, but if there are shots of the audience, I should be in there pretty much up front - a younger version of myself that is. I don't know if I would recognize myself.