The tenor sax participant got here up in Chicago and toured within the ’60s with Charles Mingus, Max Roach and Randy Weston. Jordan’s forgotten album, Drink Loads of Water, mixes singers with a small ensemble.
TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
That is FRESH AIR. Tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan got here up in Chicago and toured within the ’60s with greats like Charles Mingus, Max Roach and Randy Weston. Jordan’s personal albums embrace a tribute to folks bluesman Lead Stomach. A newly unearthed 1974 session by Jordan, which mixes singers and an actor with a small ensemble, is out now. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says it is a putting one in every of a form.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “THE WITCH DOCTOR’S CHANT (EE-BAH-LICKEY-DOO)”)
CLIFFORD JORDAN: (Singing) While you obtained one thing that’s in your thoughts, you say these phrases and it’ll make you are feeling actual high-quality. (Scatting) Ee-bah-lickey, ee-bah-lickey, ee-bah-lickey, ee-bah-lickey-doo.
KEVIN WHITEHEAD, BYLINE: “Witch Physician’s Chant (Ee-Bah-Lickey-Doo)” from Clifford Jordan’s album “Drink A lot Water.” He did not should look far for singers, drafting his teenage daughter Donna, his spouse’s sister Denise Williams, and her pal Kathy O’Boyle into an immediate lady group. They gave his songs the best street-corner cred.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “I’VE GOT A FEELING FOR YOU”)
JORDAN: (Singing) I really feel, really feel, really feel like a heel, and I do not really feel like an enormous wheel. You left me on my own. I put my blues on the shelf. Why do not you come house, babe, the place you belong? I’ve obtained a sense for you.
WHITEHEAD: Dick Griffin on trombone. Clifford Jordan was recording for the impartial Black musicians’ label Strata-East in 1974 when “Drink A lot Water” was made. It might have gone unreleased as a result of that yr Jordan and firm made a commercially unsuccessful Strata-East LP with a few of the similar front-stoop really feel, led by singer Muriel Winston, who additionally seems right here. Nonetheless, Jordan’s tunes are higher, even the dead-simple rondo “My Papa’s Coming Dwelling.”
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MY PAPA’S COMING HOME”)
JORDAN: (Singing) Coming house, coming house, coming house, I am coming house. Coming house, coming house, coming house, coming house, coming house…
WHITEHEAD: Whether or not Dad’s getting back from a enterprise journey, tour of obligation or different enforced separation, Clifford Jordan’s solo catches the celebratory temper.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MY PAPA’S COMING HOME”)
JORDAN: (Singing) Coming house, coming house, coming house, coming house, coming house, coming house, coming house, coming house, coming house, coming house, my papa’s coming house…
WHITEHEAD: Jordan had beforehand recorded instrumental variations of a few these tunes and preparations aimed toward attracting a wider viewers. However “Drink A lot Water” sounds designed for his core African American constituency. There are a few monologues by actor David L. Smyrl, later often known as “Sesame Road” shopkeeper Mr. Handford. On the observe “Drink A lot Water And Stroll Gradual,” Smyrl performs a jailhouse sage who’s seen all of it, sizing up and wising up a brand new cellmate.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “DRINK PLENTY WATER AND WALK SLOW”)
JORDAN: I hear inform you performed that horn as soon as nicely, however after that five-year layoff, boy, you sound like hell. You had been so drug, a tear got here to your eye, and you place that horn again within the case and heaved a sigh. You was about to have a nervous breakdown if Splat and Doobie and Telly Smith (ph) hadn’t instructed you the way good you sound. And one other factor that dried that tear in your eye was after they instructed you that the dinner bell had rung and that the dessert for dinner that evening was cherry pie. Boy, you fortunate that you simply had been snatched out of the alley within the Valley on fiftieth Road and stood up on this jail by yourself two ft.
WHITEHEAD: That jostle of phrases and music remembers Charles Mingus’ beatnik jazz and poetry mashups. However David Smyrl’s 1974 streetwise rhymed couplets additionally look forward just a few quick years to hip-hop. It is a reminder of the deep roots of rap and African American oral literature, even when rappers do it sooner. You’ll be able to hear hip-hop’s subject material approaching Smyrl’s tall story “Speaking Blues.”
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “TALKING BLUES”)
JORDAN: So I hung round, and I performed the clown till the Military took me in. Then I spent two years in a Texas city the place they did not like the colour of my pores and skin. Properly, now the Military did not like me. I did not like them. We was glad once we let one another go. One other secondhand automotive and a few cowboy boots and I hit it in New Mexico. Properly, I smoked plenty of grass, and I ran plenty of weapons. You recognize, I slept on the bottom at times. Yeah, I lived within the mountains with the bandits for some time until the federal troops got here in.
WHITEHEAD: High quality gamers in Clifford Jordan’s prolonged band embrace trumpeter Invoice Hardman, pianist Stanley Cowell, drummer Billy Higgins and on bass, both Sam Jones or Invoice Lee, who additionally wrote some delicate background charts for the band and who not too long ago handed away. The music for that “Speaking Blues” was improvised, and the album ends with that very same blues minus the vocal, the higher to listen to the band’s free goosing. Even so, the flavour of Black speech stays. Jordan’s onetime boss Randy Weston mentioned, I just like the music to sound like the best way Black individuals discuss. Clifford had that sound, that voice. Clifford Jordan’s voice comes via clearly within the phrases and the music on the oddball rediscovery “Drink A lot Water.”
(SOUNDBITE OF CLIFFORD JORDAN SONG, “TALKING BLUES”)
MOSLEY: Kevin Whitehead is the creator of the e book “Play The Manner You Really feel: The Important Information To Jazz Tales On Movie.” He reviewed the newly launched recording by tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan titled “Drink A lot Water.”
Tomorrow on FRESH AIR – is the film and TV business collapsing or simply reshaping itself to swimsuit the comparatively new world of the web and streaming? We’ll discuss with Bloomberg reporter Lucas Shaw about what we, the viewers, can count on sooner or later, particularly now that writers and actors are on strike. I hope you possibly can be part of us.
For Terry Gross, I am Tonya Mosley.
(SOUNDBITE OF CLIFFORD JORDAN SONG, “TALKING BLUES”)
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