This is the latest from The Bluesmobile’s C.C. Rider, who spends her life venerating the founding fathers of the blues. She’s walked the crooked highways of this singing country to resurrect the voices of the past. With the dirt of the Delta on her hands, she sleeps in the shadow of the giants on whose shoulders popular music now stands.
Louis Jordan
(July 8, 1908 – February 4, 1975)
He was the King of the Jukebox. One of the first black artists to achieve crossover success. He was a band-leader. Songwriter. Multi-Instrumentalist. Killer dancer. He starred in shorts and feature films alike. He was a titan, and his name was Louis Jordan.
He rose from a sax player’s seat in Harlem, to band leader, to wild commercial success. In the 1940’s, at the peak of his career, Jordan could rake in twenty thousand dollars a week. A hell of a lot of dough now…imagine what’d be worth then. Swing. Calypso. Jump Blues. Louis Jordan could do it all.
See…Louis Jordan had everything. Ambition. Talent. And charisma. So much of it that he set the blueprint for the greatest triple-threat in modern music. James Brown.
Well Louis Jordan was someone that could he’s like a triple threat- pass, run, and kick, choreograph, he act, he arranged it, he sang it and he played it. He was everything he was a one man show, and he kicked his legs high he did everything, he had more energy than everybody. Out of five people, and nobody can beat him.
