Jazz Articles about Duke Jordan

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Charlie Parker: Birth Of Bebop - Celebrating Bird At 100

by Mark Corroto
August 2, 2020

Let's face it, there is absolutely nothing new to say about the music of Charlie Parker, unless (insert joke here) you happen to be Phil Schaap. Lao Tzu's quote “The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long" is fitting. John Coltrane was 40 when he died in 1967, Eric Dolphy 36 in 1964, and Clifford Brown died at 25 in 1956. Parker was dead at the age of thirty-five in 1955. His legend has grown larger with ...

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Tina Brooks Quintet: The Complete Recordings

by Chris May
March 9, 2020

Mosaic Records' spring 2020 release The Complete Hank Mobley Blue Note Sessions 1963-70, the second of the label's box sets devoted to the copiously recorded (and rightly so) Hank Mobley, prompts thoughts of another of Blue Note's singular hard-bop tenor saxophone stylists. Unlike Mobley, Tina Brooks was woefully under-recorded, making just four albums under his own name. But like Mobley, Brooks had an instantly recognisable sound, was a spellbinding soloist and was also a gifted composer. In addition to his ...

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Duke Jordan: Flight to Jordan - 1960

by Marc Davis
January 3, 2016

If this isn't a perfect hard bop record, it comes awfully close. And coming from an artist who is virtually forgotten, it's all the sweeter. Duke Jordan was an A-list pianist who was there at the birth of bebop. He was part of Charlie Parker's classic quintet in 1947. So why don't we know his name the way we know Thelonious Monk's or Bud Powell's? My guess is Jordan just didn't have the personality to be ...

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Duke Jordan: In Copenhagen

by Chris Mosey
August 28, 2009

Irving Stanley “Duke" Jordan, pianist in legendary altoist Charlie Parker's classic quintet, recorded this solo album late in life. It shows he had lost none of the qualities that led Bird to pick him to take part--along with trumpeter Miles Davis, bassist Tommy Potter and drummer Max Roach--in such landmark recordings as “Bird of Paradise," “Dewey Square," “Dexterity" and “Embraceable You." It also shows that, as a composer, Jordan still had the chops that gave birth to ...

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Duke Jordan Quintet: Duke's Delight

by Mike Neely
December 6, 2007

Duke's Delight is a classy recording from a pianist of renown. While the tape was rolling Duke Jordan's playing was inspired, and the band stayed right with him throughout this session, which includes five Jordan compositions and Duke Ellington's “In My Solitude."

Playing piano in a sax and trumpet format is a setting long familiar to Jordon, and his clear, melodic lines rise above a tight band that is consistently up for the challenge. Charlie Rouse ...

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Duke Jordan: Flight to Norway

by Derek Taylor
October 25, 2003

Jazz pianists in the era of Monk and Powell faced an almost Sisyphean task when it came to currying popularity with the public. These two doyens of the instrument cast a nimbus of influence so wide that even luminaries like Elmo Hope and Herbie Nichols were subsumed in their shadows. Despite being present during the birthing of be-bop and serving as Charlie “Bird” Parker’s pianist, Duke Jordan was another one caught under blinding Klieg lights that the two put up. ...