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
