With all due respect to the great records he made as a leader, whenever Duke Jordan comes to mind, I think first of the intro he played on Charlie Parker’s “Embraceable You.” The Gershwin standard was all but reinvented by Bird’s quintet with Miles Davis, Max Roach, bassist Tommy Potter, and pianist Irving Sidney Jordan. Bird recorded two takes of “Embraceable You,” with take two the original release on Dial Records. It’s one of the most celebrated of Parker’s solos, but Jordan’s intro, and the cup-muted solo by Miles, sustain the intensity of the work from start to finish.
Today is Irving Sidney Jordan’s 93rd birthday anniversary. Here he is with own trio in Copenhagen playing “No Problem.”
And here he plays his best known original, “Jordu.”
“Jordu” was popularized by Clifford Brown and Max Roach, who recorded it on their EmArcy debut in August 1954. Max was Jordan’s advocate in Parker’s quintet. Miles Davis’s autobiography made clear his preference for John Lewis, who recorded the “Parker’s Mood” session with Bird in 1948, and a year earlier was Miles’s choice for his debut session as a leader. But Max always argued that Jordan was the right man for Bird, and on a WKCR radio interview around the time Davis’s memoir was published, he maintained that Miles was more comfortable with Lewis because of the middle class backgrounds and Julliard training they shared, whereas Max and Duke were tough, self-taught Brooklyn cats.
Jordan went on to work with Sonny Stitt and Stan Getz, and in between stints driving a cab to make a living, he led his own trios. Between 1952 and ’62, he was married to Sheila Jordan, who occasionally jests that she married Duke to get closer to her idol Charlie Parker. Jordan, who recorded the Blue Note classic Flight to Jordan in 1960, settled in Copenhagen in 1978, where he recorded frequently for Steeplechase Records. He died in 2006.
The saxophonist Chris Byars has lately recorded a set of Jordan originals that took him into lesser known works by the pianist. It’s the latest volume in a splendid series that Byars has devoted to the compositional legacies of the modern jazz greats Gigi Gryce, Lucky Thompson, Freddie Redd, and Jordan. He’s got another volume of Redd’s music on the way. Byars does occasional State Department tours, including this appearance at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait two years ago.