Louis Jordan was born on July 8, 1908 in Brinkley Arkansas to his father James Aaron Jordan, a music teacher and bandleader, and his mother Adell, who died when Louis was very young. Jordan was mostly raised by his grandmother and aunt. He began studying clarinet and saxophone with his father at a young age and became a member of his father’s band, Rabbit Foot Minstrels in the late 1920s. By the 1930s, Jordan was playing in Philadelphia and New York City with Charlie Gaines and in 1938, he started his band, the Tympany Five.
Specializing in the alto saxophone, Jordan was a multi-instrumentalist who was known as “the King of the Jukebox”. A talented singer with a comedic flair, Jordan was dubbed an “early influencer” of rock and roll by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. Jordan began his career in big-band swing jazz in the 1930s, but was best known for his popularization of jump blues, a hybrid of jazz, blues, and boogie-woogie. Jordan fronted his own band for over twenty years and duetted with some of the biggest stars of his time such as Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, and Louis Armstrong. With his Tympany Five bands, Jordan is credited with setting the bar for classic R&B, urban blues, and early rock and roll. He ranks fifth on Billboard magazine's list of most successful African-American recording artists. Louis Jordan died of a heart attack on February 4, 1975 in Los Angeles.
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