Back in college one of my pastimes, hep cat that I was, was chasing the library closing time copying their LPs to cassette tapes. My focus was Smithsonian releases of folk, world, and otherwise weird records, but I also copied plenty of early jazz and blues, mostly in the style of Bessie Smith and her peers.
I remember being especially enamored with a mix called R&B into Rock & Roll with all the offerings falling into the former category of post war Black popular music using a primarily jazz basis with, sometimes but not always, an electric guitar as the dominant instrument. Last year I reviewed a book focused on just this immensely popular but academically ignored style titled Jazz with a Beat, written by Tad Richards.
Louis Jordan featured on the R&B LP I found, as he had also featured in my 78 collection from its earliest days. The man could sell records. Known as the “King of the Jukebox” he sent 59 recordings to the R&B charts. He was still as much of a crowd pleaser when I spun those 78s for my ’90s peers as he had been for young people, Black and White, in the 1940s. Over time my tastes grew wider and deeper, diving into the 1920s and south to New Orleans, but the popular sounds of 1940s hits like “A Chicken Ain’t Nothin’ But A Bird” were a gateway drug for me. To have a new double CD of fresh Louis Jordan radio cuts triggers nostalgia for those college years. All at a fidelity far above college library LPs or worn out thrift store 78s.
World Broadcast Recordings 1944/45 features 51 recordings made for radio broadcast during those two years. Because of the timing a few reference the war, and because they were cut for radio many are relatively short, packing the full punch of Louis Jordan’s style into two minutes. Many have never been previously released, and those that have you aren’t likely to find on CD. Circle Records made this new release possible, it’s a subsidiary label of the George H. Buck Jazz Foundation (best known for Jazzology Records). Circle is where they release some later and less New Orleans focused music. Bob Wilber, Maxine Sullivan, Les Brown, John Kirby, Don Neely, and a variety of other artists have been showcased.
The album is produced by Lars Edegran, with the sound restoration by David Stocker who does a fantastic job. These are not distant air checks, the music is as crisp as a commercial 78 of the period, and there are no notable audio quality differences track to track. Nor are there any words from sponsors or announcers to break the flow. This is a fast-paced collection both because of Jordan’s joyful style and because of the punch punch punch created by the relative brevity of most tracks. All tracks find Jordan accompanied by his Tympany Five, though the musicians switch up a bit. Mostly the music is led by Jordan’s definitive alto sax, but where a guitar is heard, after 1945, it is Carl Hogan.
Evocative titles include “You Run Your Mouth and I’ll Run My Business Brother,” “The Chicks I Pick are Tender, Slender, and Tall,” “That’s the Mess You Gotta Stress,” and “Don’t Worry About That Mule.” They don’t write hits like they used to.
Stylistically there are more instrumentals here, and more instrumental time, than you will find on the records Louis Jordan recorded for sale. These cuts, while complete, were used by World Broadcast recordings to fill air time with something enjoyable between segments or shows, and are geared to that function. The album does not concentrate on his hits and some of these titles he never recorded in his regular catalog.
I owe the above claim to Scott Yanow’s insightful liner notes. In five and a half pages of text they adequately prepare the listener with a primer on Louis Jordan’s career and place in American music, as well as the provenance and artists heard on these records. While Louis Jordan’s music is hardly unavailable 80 years after he was King of the Jukebox, the context provided by an album like World Broadcast Recordings is something you will never get from YouTube comments or a Spotify mix. Alternatively, a new release like this one has a better chance of reaching ears on Spotify and becoming the gateway drug for a new generation that Smithsonian jazz collections were for me. Louis Jordan remains as broadly appealing as ever, I plan on popping this album in at my New Year’s party.
Louis Jordan
World Broadcast Recordings 1944/45
Circle CCD-193
www.jazzology.com
