Irving Sidney "Duke" Jordan (1922 - 2006)
updated February 06, 2019
Irving Sidney "Duke" Jordan was born on April 1, 1922. He married Sheila Jordan. He died on August 8, 2006 at 84 years old.
Duke Jordan
Birth name Irving Sidney Jordan
Born April 1, 1922
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Died August 8, 2006 (aged 84)
Valby, Copenhagen, Denmark
Genres Bebop
Occupation Musician
Instruments Piano
Labels Signal, Blue Note, SteepleChase
Irving Sidney "Duke" Jordan (April 1, 1922 – August 8, 2006) was an American jazz pianist.
Jordan was born in New York and raised in Brooklyn where he attended Boys High School. An imaginative and gifted pianist, Jordan was a regular member of Charlie Parker's quintet during 1947–48, which also featured Miles Davis. He participated in Parker's Dial sessions in late 1947 that produced "Dewey Square", "Bongo Bop", "Bird of Paradise", and the ballad "Embraceable You". These performances are featured on Charlie Parker on Dial.
Jordan had a long solo career from the mid-1950s onwards. After gigs accompanying Sonny Stitt and Stan Getz, he performed and recorded in the trio format. His most notable composition, "Jordu", became a jazz standard when trumpeter Clifford Brown adopted it into his repertoire.
Beginning in 1978 he lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, having recorded an extensive sequence of albums for the SteepleChase label; his first record date for the company was in 1973. He was reported not to have changed his style over the course of his career. Some of his best live recordings are available on SteepleChase, or Marshmallow Records, a Japanese label.
From 1952 to 1962 he was married to the jazz singer Sheila Jordan. Their union produced a daughter, Tracey J. Jordan. He died in Valby, Copenhagen.
Discography
As leader
Do It Yourself Jazz Vol. 1 (Signal, 1955) (Savoy 1959)
Trio (Vogue 1954) (Prestige New Jazz as Jordu 1955) (Prestige as Jordu 1970)
Duke Jordan (Trio and Quintet) (Signal, 1955) (Savoy 1959) (Savoy Jazz 1986 as Flight To Jordan different than Blue Note)
Flight to Jordan (Blue Note, 1960)
Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Charlie Parker, 1962)
East and West of Jazz (Charlie Parker, 1962) with Sadik Hakim
Brooklyn Brothers (Muse, 1973) with Cecil Payne
The Murray Hill Caper (Spotlite, 1973)
Flight to Denmark (SteepleChase, 1973 [1974])
Two Loves (SteepleChase, 1973 [1975])
Truth (SteepleChase, 1975 [1983])
Misty Thursday (SteepleChase, 1975 [1976])
Duke's Delight (SteepleChase, 1975 [1976])
Lover Man (SteepleChase, 1975 [1979])
Live in Japan (SteepleChase, 1976 [1977])
Osaka Concert Vol. 1 (SteepleChase, 1976 [1994])
Osaka Concert Vol. 2 (SteepleChase, 1976 [1994])
Flight to Japan (SteepleChase, 1976 [1994])
Flight to Norway (SteepleChase, 1976 [2003])
Duke's Artistry (SteepleChase, 1978)
The Great Session (SteepleChase, 1978 [1981])
Tivoli One (SteepleChase, 1978 [1985])
Tivoli Two (SteepleChase, 1978 [1985])
Wait and See (SteepleChase, 1978)
Solo Masterpieces Vol. 1 (SteepleChase, 1979)
Midnight Moonlight (SteepleChase, 1979 [1981])
Solo Masterpieces Vol. 2 (SteepleChase, 1979)
No Problem (SteepleChase, 1979)
Thinking of You (SteepleChase, 1979 [1982])
Change a Pace (SteepleChase, 1979)
Art Pepper with Duke Jordan in Copenhagen 1981 (Galaxy, 1981 [1996]) with Art Pepper
Time on My Hands (SteepleChase, 1985 [1988])
As Time Goes By (SteepleChase, 1985 [1989])
As sideman[edit]
Gene Ammons Blues Up and Down, Vol. 1 (Prestige PR 7823)
Gene Ammons The Happy Blues (Prestige PRLP 7039)
Gene Ammons All Star Sessions (Prestige PRLP 7050)
Ernestine Anderson It's Time for Ernestine (Metronome (Swd))
Chet Baker No Problem (SteepleChase, 1979)
Paul Bascomb Bad Bascomb (Delmark DL 431)
Eddie Bert (Discovery DL 3024)
Eddie Bert Quintet (Discovery DL 3020)
Art Blakey Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960 (Fontana, 1959 – Original Soundtrack with Barney Wilen)
Tina Brooks True Blue (Blue Note BLP 4041, CDP 7243 8 28975-2)
Kenny Burrell Blue Lights, Vol. 1 (Blue Note BLP 1596)
Kenny Burrell Blue Lights, Vol. 2 (Blue Note BLP 1597)
Kenny Burrell Swingin' (Blue Note (J) GXF 3070)
Joe Carroll (Charlie Parker CP 201)
Teddy Edwards The Inimitable Teddy Edwards (Xanadu 134)
Rolf Ericson and his American All Stars (Metronome (Swd) JMLP 2-105, EmArcy MG 36106)
Art Farmer Art Farmer Quintet featuring Gigi Gryce (Prestige, 1955)
Stan Getz Duke Ellington 25th Anniversary Concert (FDC (It) 1005)
Stan Getz Getz Age (Roost RLP 2258)
Stan Getz Hooray for Stan Getz (Session Disc 108)
Stan Getz Move! (Natasha Imports 4005)
Stan Getz Sweetie Pie (Philology (It) W 40-2)
Stan Getz The Complete Roost Recordings (Roost CDP 7243 8 59622-2)
Stan Getz Stan Getz Plays (Norgran, 1952)
Stan Getz Quartet (Queen Disc (It) Q 013)
Stan Getz Quintet Live at Carnegie Hall (Fresh Sound (Sp) FSCD 1003)
Stan Getz Quintet Live at the Hi-Hat 1953, Vol. 1 (Fresh Sound (Sp) FSCD 1014)
Stan Getz Quintet Live at the Hi-Hat 1953, Vol. 2 (Fresh Sound (Sp) FSCD 1015)
Stan Getz Quintet That Top Tenor Technician Stan Getz (Alto AL 704)
Gigi Gryce Doin' the Gigi (Uptown, 2011)
Coleman Hawkins and his Orchestra (Decca 27853)
Joe Holiday Holiday for Jazz (Decca DL 8487)
Howard McGhee The Return of Howard McGhee (Bethlehem BCP 42)
Charles McPherson – Beautiful! (Xanadu 115)
Barry Miles – Miles of Genius (Charlie Parker PLP 804)
Sam Most Mostly Flute (Xanadu 133)
Charlie Parker Complete Charlie Parker on Dial, Charlie Parker on Dial (Jazz Classics, Spotlite)
Cecil Payne Patterns of Jazz (Savoy, 1956)
Cecil Payne Bird Gets The Worm (Muse, 1976)
Cecil Payne Shaw 'Nuff (Charlie Parker PLP 506)
Cecil Payne The Connection (Charlie Parker PLP 806)
Cecil Payne Performing Charlie Parker Music (Charlie Parker PLP 801)
Cecil Payne Quartet and Quintet (Signal S 1203)
Oscar Pettiford Oscar Pettiford (Bethlehem, 1954)
Doug Raney Introducing Doug Raney (SteepleChase, 1977)
Dizzy Reece Comin' On (Blue Note CDP 7243 5 22019-2)
Louis Smith – Here Comes Louis Smith (Blue Note BLP 1584)
Sonny Stitt Stitt's Bits (Prestige PRLP 7133)
Sonny Stitt The Champ (Muse MR 5023)
Sonny Stitt Sonny Stitt & the Top Brass (Atlantic SD 1395)
Clark Terry's Big-B-A-D-Band Live at the Wichita Jazz Festival (Vanguard VSD 79355)
Doug Watkins Watkins at Large (Transition TRLP 20)
Julius Watkins Julius Watkins Sextet (Blue Note CDP 7243 4 95749-2)
Barney Wilen Barney (RCA (F) 430053)
Barney Wilen Un Temoin dans la Ville (Fontana (F) 660 226-MR)
Teddy Williams – Touch of the Blues c/w Dumb Woman Blues (Prestige 715)
The Birdlanders, Vol. 1 (Period SPL 1211)
The Birdlanders, Vol. 2 (Period SPL 1212)
The Birdlanders, Vol. 3 (Period SPL 1213)
Various Artists Birds Night: A Night at the Five Spot (Signal S 1204) Savoy (1958) (Savoy Jazz 2 LPs Celebration of Music of Charlie Parker)
Various Artists International Jam Sessions (Xanadu 122)
Various Artists Lestorian Mode (Savoy MG 12105)
Various Artists The Piano Players (Xanadu 171)
Various Artists Birdology vols. 1&2 (Birdology, Verve 1990 CDs)
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Duke Jordan, 84, Jazz Pianist Who Helped to Build Bebop, Dies
By TIM WEINERAUG. 12, 2006 NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARY.
Duke Jordan, a pianist whose work with the saxophonist Charlie Parker endures in the jazz canon, died on Tuesday in Valby, Denmark, a suburb of Copenhagen. He was 84, and he had lived in self-imposed exile from the United States since 1978, continuing to perform in the musical tradition he helped create.
His death was confirmed by Alistair Thomson, a spokesman for the United States Embassy in Denmark.
Mr. Jordan was regarded as one of the great early bebop pianists. The sound that he helped to create in the postwar era was something new in the American landscape, and it remains a cornerstone of jazz.
His work with Parker, recorded for the Dial and Savoy labels, soared with a lilting intensity. It was hard-driving and lyrical, heady and heartfelt, said Ira Gitler, a jazz critic who heard Mr. Jordan and Parker in 1947, at the Onyx Club and the Three Deuces, two long-vanished nightclubs on West 52nd Street in Manhattan.
A handful of recordings from 1947 and 1948 featuring Parker, along with Miles Davis on trumpet, Mr. Jordan on piano and Max Roach on drums, are considered masterpieces. They include “Embraceable You,” “Crazeology,” and “Scrapple From the Apple.”
Mr. Jordan’s “beautifully apt introductions,” in the words of Phil Schaap, curator of Jazz at Lincoln Center, lasted only seconds. But they set the stage for three-minute explosions of creativity.
Bebop — its nonsense name often credited to the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie — was nothing like the orchestral jazz of the 1930’s, made for ballroom dancing. It was fast, furious, intricate and improvised. Musicians took the basic structures of the blues or standards like “I Got Rhythm” and turned them inside out, embellishing their chords with cascades of notes. In Mr. Jordan’s hands, the piano, freed from keeping metronomic time, became a fountain of melody and color.
In 1949 and the early 1950’s, Mr. Jordan recorded with groups led by the saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Stan Getz and Sonny Stitt, led his own quartet and performed at New York nightclubs and on national radio broadcasts. His work in the 1950’s sometimes embraced more of a blues and gospel feeling but never left the fundamentals of the bebop sound.
Classically trained, he had a gift for composing and teaching, and several of his works, including “Jor-du” and “No Problem,” remain jazz classics, Mr. Schaap said. Some of his compositions are also heard on the soundtrack of the 1959 version of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” directed by Roger Vadim and starring Jeanne Moreau.
Irving Sidney Jordan was born in New York at the dawn of the era of recorded jazz, on April 1, 1922. Before his 21st birthday he was playing piano in big bands, including the Savoy Sultans, the house orchestra at the Savoy Ballroom, in its day the world’s most famous dance hall.
Gillespie once called the Savoy Sultans “the swingingest band there ever was.”
In 1952 he married the jazz singer Sheila Jordan, who often said that she loved Charlie Parker so much that she married his piano player. Their interracial marriage was unusual in the 1950’s, when segregation remained legal, and miscegenation was a crime in some states. The marriage lasted ten years.
Ms. Jordan became a highly regarded performer whose career continues today. They had a daughter, Tracy, who became a music promoter. He has no other known survivors.
He began a new life as a leader of trios and quartets in Copenhagen, where he settled permanently in 1978.
Duke recorded more than 30 albums for the Danish label SteepleChase Records and performed in concerts and at jazz festivals worldwide.
“He never changed styles,” said Scott Yanow, a jazz historian. “He had been one of the very first pianists to pick up on the changes that bebop brought, breaking out of conventional song, which took jazz beyond dance music into something new.”
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1922 - 2006 World Events
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In 1922, in the year that Irving Sidney "Duke" Jordan was born, on December 6th, the Irish Free State, a self-governing dominion of the British Empire, was officially proclaimed. While establishing some independence for the people of Ireland, it did not create a fully independent Ireland and the fighting continued.
In 1936, Irving was merely 14 years old when on November 3rd, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was reelected to a second term. He ran against Republican Governor Alf Landon (Kansas), defeating Landon in the popular vote by 60.8% to 36.5%. Vermont and Maine were the only two states in which Landon won. John Nance Garner IV became the Vice-President in this election.
In 1955, when he was 33 years old, in January, President Eisenhower sent direct aid to South Vietnam. In February, U.S. advisors were sent to train troops.
In 1969, when he was 47 years old, one hundred countries, along with the United States and the Soviet Union signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT). It called for stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and the goal of nuclear disarmament.
In 1996, Irving was 74 years old when on April 3rd, Theodore Kaczynski (nicknamed the Unabomber) was arrested. His mailed or hand-delivered bombs, sent between 1978 and 1995, killed three people and injured 23 others. Diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, Kaczynski is serving 8 life sentences without the possibility of parole.
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