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Before I launch into the remaining two parts of my Q&A conversation with saxophonist Anthony Ortega, I want to present you with The Street We Took (2007), a 15-minute documentary on Anthony and his wife Mona by filmmaker Andrew Rubin...
Tomorrow, Anthony Ortega talks about touring with Lionel Hampton and recording with Gigi Gryce and Clifford Brown, and meeting his wife Mona in Oslo.
If you're a student of liner notes from the 1950s, the name Anthony Ortega should ring a bell. Anthony played saxophone on a range of well-known recordings during jazz's golden decade, including sessions led by Gigi Gryce, Art Farmer, Quincy Jones, Sonny Stitt, Dinah Washington, Billy Taylor, Nat Pierce, Maynard Ferguson and others. Anthony also led many fabulous recording sessions from the 1950s onward. [Top: Anthony Ortega in high school in the early 1940s, courtesy of Anthony Ortega]
Interestingly, Anthony is one of only a handful of Mexican-Americans who became prominent jazz musicians. Rather than let himself be nudged into Latin bands over the decades, Anthony carved out a niche for himself as a flavorist, most often on alto sax. His tone has a sweet, urgent, pleading edge that was favored by many arrangers. As for his technique, Anthony had the ability to launch effortlessly into lightning-fast improvisational runs.
In Part 1 of my four-part conversation with Anthony Ortega, 83, the saxophonist, clarinetist and flutist talks about growing up on the West Coast and getting his start in music...
JazzWax: Where were you born?
Anthony Ortega: In Los Angeles, in Watts, which is in South Central L.A. I went to grammar school, junior high and high school there. My father was a laborer who worked in a chicken market and did odd jobs. His father had been born in La Paz, Mexico, which is near the tip of the long, thin peninsula on Mexico’s western side. My grandfather was a general in Mexico.
JW: And your mom?
AO: My mother was born in El Paso, Texas, but her family traces back to Mexico as well. I have an older brother and sister.
JW: Did you enjoy growing up in Los Angeles in the late ‘30s and ‘40s?
AO: I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was a great time. The city was more rural then. Nearby Orange County was full of orchards and avocado farms, and there were plenty of rabbits running around.
JW: Were you always interested in music?
AO: Yes. I started by listening to Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman’s big bands. I didn’t go to concerts. They were too expensive. Most of the music I heard was on the radio. Later on I started buying 78-rpms.
JW: Who first encouraged you to become a musician?
AO: Ray Vasquez, my cousin. He was a good singer and trombonist. We’d always listen to records at his house. He liked Duke Ellington, but I didn’t care much for him. The sound of his orchestra was old fashioned to me. It didn’t grab me the way Count Basie’s and Glenn Miller’s [pictured] bands did. Both were well blended and put together in a modern way.
JW: What other records did your cousin play for you?
AO: A lot of discs by tenor saxophonists like Lester Young and Ben Webster. I liked them a lot, too. And Tex Beneke [pictured]. I dug his sunny personality and the way he sang. The way he played his solos was pretty good, too. Now, of course, he sounds a little heavy. But back then, you could really hear the craft. I was obsessed with the saxophone. Eventually my cousin said, “Tell your mom to get you one.” So I asked her. She bought me a used alto down at Lockie's Music Exchange in L.A.
JW: Did you go along on that shopping trip?
AO: Oh sure. My cousin came, too, with a friend of his—Maurice Simon, a sax player. Maurice was there to test out the instruments. Maurice tried out a couple of altos for me, since a tenor was out of my mother’s price range.
JW: Did she buy one for you?
AO: Yes, she bought me a used Conn for $103. It was a good horn, and the salesman said it used to belong to one of Glenn Miller’s sax players. That’s all I needed to hear. I took really good care of that horn and began to practice with a passion.
JW: Did you take lessons?
AO: Not right away. Jordan High School had a solid music program, so I studied there instead of privately. The students were all mixed. There were Mexican, Japanese, black and white kids—and everyone got along. The school had a junior band for students just starting out and then there were different types of bands for more advanced players.
JW: Did you eventually take private lessons?
AO: I took lessons from Lloyd Reese, after my cousin recommended him to me. Reese was a superb trumpeter and saxophonist. He played in swing bands and in the Hollywood studios. He taught everyone coming up. My cousin said, “You’re practicing hard and doing a good job, but you need a teacher.” I took a streetcar to Reese’s home, which was on Maple Street. Lessons were $3 for an hour. I took lessons with him for five years. We worked through Paul de Ville’s Universal Method for the Saxophone book from 1908—a classic. Reese also taught me the chord changes to songs.
JW: Were you eager to begin improvising?
AO: Yes. I wanted to start jamming right away. But as I learned all those chord changes, improvising sort of kicked in automatically.
JW: Weren’t you distracted in high school?
AO: A little, which made me lax. At one point in 1943, Reese started to notice that I wasn’t practicing as intensively as I had been. He said, “What happened to you this week, Anthony?” I said, “Well, I’ve been thinking about going out for the football team.” He said, “Do you want to be a football player or sax player?” [Photo: Anthony Ortega in high school]
JW: What did you say?
AO: I told him I wanted to think about it. But I knew immediately in my heart that the saxophone was more important to me than football. So I quit the team and devoted the time to practicing a lot more.
JW: Did you own a zoot suit?
AO: Not the full rig, but I had a nice one when I was 16. It was sharkskin with big shoulders and pants draped down. Not extreme.
JW: When did you start playing in groups outside of high school?
AO: In 1943 I was in a band called the Junior Hep Cats, a group of black and Mexican musicians. We once played a high school concert and instead of blowing a lot of notes, I just rode a couple during my solo. Everything thought that was so cool, going the opposite way. I became a star on campus [laughs]. [Photo of Anthony Ortega, bottom right, with the Junior Hep Cats, courtesy of Anthony Ortega]
JW: What was your first paying job as a musician?
AO: That came during the war, in 1944. Friends were jamming on some of Charlie Parker’s songs. We decided to form a little group called The Frantic Five. During the war, there was a USO in Watts. Sailors and soldiers went there to dance with the girls on Friday and Saturday nights. Our group got a job there playing for the dancers. [Pictured: Anthony Ortega, with Hal McKusick to his left, in Claude Thornhill's band in 1950]
JW: Who wrote your arrangements?
AO: They were mostly head charts. We made about $5 each for playing there. I was 16 years old and still in high school. Once in a while we played somewhere else. When were weren’t gigging, we practiced a lot and listened to 78s on a wind-up Victrola.
JW: Why a wind-up?
AO: You could copy a solo by slowing down the tempo with the crank. What you’d hear would be in a different key, of course. But you were able to figure out how the chord intervals ran and the thinking behind the solos. That helped a lot.
JW: Did you continue with music in high school?
AO: Yes. I was selected to be part of the All City Junior High School Orchestra, which gave me exposure to classical music.
JW: Did you study only the saxophone with Reese?
AO: No. After a year of studying, Reese told me that if my ambition was to play in an orchestra, I’d have to double on the clarinet. So I took up the clarinet with him. The clarinet came easy to me. My idols were Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, and I listened to them a lot. After the clarinet I took up the flute.
JW: Did you own those instruments?
AO: By that time I was earning enough from gigs to put down payments on both. The clarinet was $110, and Reese sold me a flute for $100. I paid in installments.
Tomorrow, a special treat you won't want to miss.
JazzWax clip: Here's Anthony Ortega with Gigi Gryce and Clifford Brown in Paris in October 1953 on Bum's Rush...
Sheila Jordan isn't a trained singer. But she is a passionate singer whose roots date back to Charlie Parker and other bebop musicians of the late '40s and early '50s whom she knew as a teen and asked her to sit in. Sheila also is an example of an artist who had a very rough early life but used her love for music as a way to keep her spirits high and positive through it all.
When Sheila walks into a room, everyone feels her presence. Much of her radiance has to do with how her eyes all but turn into crescents when she smiles broadly. She has one of those smiles that makes friends instantly. Speaking with her for this interview also made me realize how honest and blunt she is. There's no spin with Sheila.
In Part 3 of my three-part interview with Sheila Jordan, the singer talks about her marriage to pianist Duke Jordan and how she came to begin recording albums starting in 1962:
JazzWax: In the 1950s, you studied with pianist Lennie Tristano?
Sheila Jordan: Yes. Lennie gave me inspiration and an opportunity to try out vocal ideas. At the time, Lennie had a studio at 317 E. 32nd St. in Manhattan. I went to him because I was looking for a teacher. Max Roach, who I knew through Bird and Duke, had told me about him. Then Charles Mingus took me up to see him when Charles was playing a session there.
JW: What did you learn?
SJ: My first lesson was to learn Bird’s Now’s the Time. I told Lennie I already knew it. He said, “Great, go ahead and sing it.” I sang the song right off. Lennie said, “Well damn, you do know the song. What about Prez?” I told him I didn’t know any Lester Young solos.
JW: Was your marriage to pianist Duke Jordan a happy one?
SJ: No. We were in love—or I thought we were. The problem for us was that Duke was addicted to heroin, which wasn’t good for a marriage or anything else. He’d leave me and come back when he pleased. After my daughter Tracey was born, he didn’t come back at all, which was terrible. [Photo above of Sheila Jordan in the early '50s, courtesy of Sheila Jordan]
JW: Looking back, do you feel you should have tried to get Jordan to kick his drug habit?
SJ: Not at all. I didn’t feel as though it was my responsibility to police his habit. To be honest, I really detached. I had seen my share of addiction growing up and wanted to pull away. I was naturally allergic to it.
JW: Many black jazz musicians married white women. Why do you think that is?
SJ: I don’t know. Most of the cats that I knew had white wives, but I have no clue why. Most loved each other, and I suppose people are attracted to differences and the people they care about and respect most, regardless of color.
JW: Did Jordan take you seriously as a singer?
SJ: He did. We didn’t play together or record because I wasn’t ready to sing like that. I was just enjoying it.
JW: Are you sorry you didn’t record earlier, in the ‘50s?
SJ: No. I never set out to be a diva. I just wanted to dedicate my life to the music and have fun doing it.
JW: What changed your mind when you began to record seriously in 1962?
SJ: I was singing at the Page Three club in Greenwich Village two nights a week. I wasn’t singing for the money. I was paid only $6 a night, and by the time I paid the babysitter, I didn’t have much left. Then George Russell [pictured] came in one night.
JW: Your first major recording was You Are My Sunshine on Russell’s Outer View album. That’s quite a recording.
SJ: George had come in to hear pianist Jack Reilly, one of his students, and Steve Swallow on bass. Back then I would do two sets a night. Monday night was session night, when all the singers sang there. I was the jazz singer.
JW: What happened?
SJ: After I sang, George liked what he heard and came up to me afterward. He said, “Where do you come from?”—meaning where did I grow up and what was my background. I said, “I come from hell, man.” We then spent time talking and I told him my life story.
JW: What was Russell's response?
SJ: He asked for my number. I gave it to him, and not long afterward he called me. He asked me to come down to his place to hear something. My daughter was at a friend’s house, so I went.
JW: What did Russell play for you when you arrived?
SJ: He played this incredible introduction to a song. Then he stopped cold and said, “Sing You Are My Sunshine here.” I said, “What, are you kidding? There’s nobody to sing with.”
JW: What did he say?
SJ: George said, “That’s OK. I want you to sing by yourself. You said you sang by yourself as a kid.”
JW: How did he know so much about you?
SJ: What I didn’t tell you is that in addition to talking about my background, we actually drove down to Pennsylvania, to my grandparents’ house. George wanted to get a full feeling for where I had come from.
JW: What happened down there?
SJ: Well, it was me, my grandmother and George. Everyone else in my family there had died or moved away except for her. She said, “Let’s go up to the bar for a drink.” So we did, and my grandmother tried to pass us off as big stars. A coal miner in there looked at me and said, “Do you still sing You Are My Sunshine” Jeanie?”
JW: What did you say?
SJ: I said, “No.” George turned to me surprised and said, “Why not?” So he goes over to this beat-up upright piano and starts to play the song. My grandmother soon pushed him off and said, “That’s not the way it goes” and played it while I sang. I think that’s when he realized where I came from [laughs].
JW: So when you went down to Russell’s place, he had written an arrangement that reflected your background?
SJ: Yes. He wanted it to be like a documentary of my rough upbringing in coal country. He wanted to call it, A Drinking Song. But there was only one miner in the bar that day, so he couldn’t really do that.
JW: Looking back, what do you think of Russell?
SJ: I think he was an underrated genius. He was also a kind man. He paid for my divorce from Duke in 1962 or ’63 and was good to my daughter. He’d take her to nursery school when I couldn’t.
JW: Was it hard breaking up with Jordan?
SJ: Yes. He left me, and I had to raise my daughter alone. Duke was a drug addict and had left because he had met someone else who would support his habit. He didn’t even come to the hospital to see his child when she was born. It was all very painful.
JW: How did your first album Portrait of Sheila for Blue Note happen?
SJ: George loved my singing and paid for a demo. Then he took it around to Prestige and Blue Note. Blue Note picked it up first, and that was the beginning of my serious recording career.
JW: How would you describe your vocal style?
SJ: I don’t’ know. Honest, I guess. I don’t try to be anything else but that. I just sing for the joy of singing. I never worried about why some singers were making it and I wasn’t. I just wanted to keep the music alive, especially Bird’s music. Musicians always thank Miles Davis and John Coltrane for inspiring them. They never thank Bird. Sonny Rollins talks about Bird all the time. Sonny is something else. He’s a beautiful human being. He’s so special. So humble.
JW: Are you recording again soon?
SJ: I’m trying to work on a duo album with Steve Kuhn. But I hate to record. I don’t like studios.
JazzWax notes: On-stage tributes to Sheila Jordan and the rest of the NEA Jazz Masters honorees will be held next Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at Rose Theater at New York's Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.
If you're unable to attend, you can watch on your computer from anywhere in the world by going to arts.gov or jalc.org (7:30 p.m., EST). The concert also will be broadcast live on WBGO-FM in New York and on SiriusXM Satellite Radio's Real Jazz Channel XM67. A video archive of the concert will also be available at arts.gov following the event.
Sheila tells me she is working on a memoir with writer Ellen Johnson. More on Sheila Jordan at her website here.
JazzWax clip: Here's Sheila Jordan singing You Are My Sunshine with George Russell...
There aren't too many musicians today who have truly lived the jazz life in the '40s and '50s. To live the jazz life back then, you had to be completely committed to the music and at one with the artists. Creativity was currency, and the music you heard coming from musicians' instruments often said more about humanity than the written and spoken word. You also had to see integration as a normal way of life at a time when much of society and law enforcement viewed racial mixing as a threat that needed to be stopped, often with intimidation and violence. Vocalist Sheila Jordan lived the jazz life. [Photo at top of Sheila Jordan in 1951, courtesy of Sheila Jordan; Detroit police on motorcycles in the '50s]
When we read about racial prejudice in the late 1940s and 1950s, it's most often told from the perspective of black jazz musicians who experienced it. But white women who dated, married or just associated with black jazz artists often were subjects of intensive scrutiny and hostility. Sheila experienced her share in Detroit and New York. [Pictured: Baroness Pannonica Rothschild with Thelonious Monk]
In Part 2 of my three-part interview with Sheila—who will be honored next week as an NEA Jazz Master—the jazz singer talks about her experiences with racial hostility in two cities...
JazzWax: As a white woman with black friends and a passion for black culture in the '40s and '50s, did you face racial prejudice then?
Sheila Jordan: Oh sure, all the time. After high school I was going to all the black clubs and had to deal with a lot of racial prejudice by whites who didn't like what I was doing. Even in high school, the white principal made cracks.
JW: Like what?
SJ: She once said, “You dress so nice, why do you hang out with colored girls?” I said, “Oh, are they colored?” She said, “Yes,” sort of hissing the final “s.”
JW: What did you say?
SJ: I said, “I feel comfortable. They’re my friends.” I had had such a rough home life and a hard time in high school. I was always looked down on. The music lifted me up and the people who played it gave me purpose. Because of my background, I could relate to what they were going through.
JW: As a white woman frequenting black neighborhoods in Detroit, was the prejudice toward you particularly rough?
SJ: Oh sure, man. After I graduated from high school, I hung around all the black clubs and sat in when asked by musicians. When we finished at places like the Blue Bird Inn and Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, we’d pile into a car or cab to go home or go out. Cops would stop us all the time and ask where we were going.
JW: What did they say to you?
SJ: They’d say, “What are you doing with these two…” I can’t even say the word.
JW: What did you say in response?
SJ: I learned early that you had sound a little naïve. Otherwise you could put yourself and everyone else in the car in danger. I’d say something like, “What? I can’t be with my brothers?” The word “brothers” wasn’t used like it is now. I was using it as though I was truly related to them, like we shared the same mother.
JW: What did the police say?
SJ: They’d seem perplexed and say, “Oh, go on, go on.” Essentially, I had to convince them I wasn’t white for it to be OK.
JW: Did you date black musicians?
SJ: Yes. I started going with tenor saxophonist Frank Foster in Detroit. We lived together until he went into the Army. I remember one time we were going on a picnic to Belle Isle park in the Detroit River with Jenny King, who was white and her boyfriend, who was black. The cops stopped us. They were plainclothes cops. I had thrown a cigarette from the window, and they crawled under the car to get it, thinking it was grass or something. Just another excuse to jam up an interracial couple.
JW: What happened?
SJ: They took us down to headquarters. They separated us and spoke to me alone. One cop said, “I want your mother’s phone number.” I told him I hadn’t lived with my mother since I was 17. I told him I was on my own.
JW: What did he say?
SJ: He said, “You see my gun? If I found my daughter with a—that word again—I’d blow her brains out.” You can’t even imagine what life was like back then without understanding the kind of blind hatred that existed for blacks by whites in certain cities, particularly among the police. There was racism and then there was this horrible fury that was reserved for interracial couples. It was horrible to experience.
JW: What did you say?
SJ: I told the cop I was moving to New York. He said sarcastically, “How cosmopolitan.” I shut up, and they let us all go. I heard later that they weren’t too rough with the guys. After that, Frank went into the Army during the Korean War, and I moved to New York in 1951.
JW: Where did you live in New York?
SJ: My best friend Jenny King and Virginia Cox, a Detroit artist, already had an apartment they were sharing in the Gramercy Park area. A room there was vacant and I took it. I came later because I was still with Frank Foster, before he left for the Army.
JW: What did you do for work?
SJ: I went to a temp agency and got a job as a typist at the Doyle Dane Bernbach ad agency. They liked my work in the research department, so I took a full-time job.
JW: Why did you move to New York?
SJ: To hear Bird. When I arrived, I went to see him right away at a club with my friend Jenny. I guess I was chasin’ the Bird [laughs]. When Bird saw me, he immediately said, “Oh you’re the kid with the million dollar ears.” How he remembered is beyond me [laughs].
JW: Was Parker's Chasin’ the Bird written for you?
SJ: No. I don’t know how that rumor got started.
JW: When did you first meet pianist Duke Jordan?
SJ: Back in Detroit, when he came through town with Bird. I loved his piano playing. His invented song introductions were the most beautiful things I had ever heard. I would go and hear him, and eventually I got to know him. This was before I had met Frank. Duke said, “If you ever come to New York, I’d be happy to see you.”
JW: When did the friendship turn romantic?
SJ: After I moved to New York. I started living with him in Brooklyn. Bird used to play these “cocktail sips,” which were formal Sunday afternoon parties that the black community threw. Bird would play with Duke on piano.
JW: Was there racial prejudice toward you by the black community?
SJ: Not at all. Everyone was wonderful to me. I was always accepted.
JW: Did you stay in Brooklyn?
SJ: After I had been with Duke for a while, I decided to move back into Manhattan. I got this loft on 26th St. and 8th Ave. and held jam sessions there. It was actually two lofts cut in half. My friend Virginia had the other half. Bird was at my loft all the time. He turned me on to Bartok. He’d bring records up to the loft. But he never came on to me. I was his little sister. I married Duke in 1953.
JW: Why would Bird come to your loft?
SJ: Just to visit or crash, or after fights with [his wife] Chan. Bird was so positive. He never talked about anything that was down or unhappy. The only time I heard him say something with disgust was when Duke was high [on heroin] and was nodding out. When he saw Duke in that condition, Bird scowled and said to him, “Man, didn’t you learn anything from me?”
JW: In New York, did you encounter the same kind of racial prejudice that you had faced in Detroit?
SJ: Yes. One time I went out to get some Chinese food with two black artist friends. On our way back, coming around 26th St., four white guys jumped us.
JW: What happened?
SJ: The guys threw me down and started kicking me, knocking out a cap on one of my teeth. They had run out of a bar as soon as they saw me with my two black friends. Three of the white guys grabbed my two artist friends and held them while the fourth guy was kicking me. He was ready to kill me when a white detective got out of a car and came across the street with a gun pointed in my direction. He approached the guy beating me up and asked him what I was to him and did he know me. The guy who was beating me up said, "No." The detective ordered him to stop beating me and put them all up against the wall This plain clothesman saved my life. It infuriated those guys in the bar that I was with two black guys. People today think this stuff went on only in the South, but it also happened on 26th St. in New York.
JazzWax notes: On-stage tributes to Sheila Jordan and the rest of the NEA Jazz Masters honorees will be held next Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at Rose Theater at New York's Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.
If you're unable to attend, you can watch on your computer from anywhere in the world by going to arts.gov or jalc.org (7:30 p.m., EST). The concert also will be broadcast live on WBGO-FM in New York and on SiriusXM Satellite Radio's Real Jazz Channel XM67. A video archive of the concert will also be available at arts.gov following the event.
Sheila tells me she is working on a memoir with writer Ellen Johnson. More on Sheila Jordan at her website here.
JazzWax tracks: One of my favorite Sheila Jordan albums is One for Junior, recorded with Mark Murphy for Muse in 1989. The sound of these two together is bliss—like two saxophones going at it. Sadly, the album is out of print, but it appears to be available on CD from used sellers at Amazon.
JazzWax clip: How good is the Sheila Jordan-Mark Murphy album? Hear a track for yourself. If ever there was a charmed jazz pairing, this is it...
And here's Sheila singing Confirmation a few years ago. Dig those strings!...
On January 10, Sheila Jordan will be honored in New York by the National Endowment for the Arts as a 2012 NEA Jazz Master—the nation's most prestigious jazz award. Joining her on stage will be co-honorees drummer Jack DeJohnette, saxophonist Von Freeman, bassist Charlie Haden and trumpeter Jimmy Owens. It's going to be a big evening for her, and a long time coming. [Photo at top of Sheila Jordan at a 52nd St. club in 1953, courtesy of Sheila Jordan]
Many jazz fans may be unfamiliar with Sheila's music and likely know little or nothing about her background. She was never a pop singer, and as a jazz vocalist she didn't begin recording in earnest until 1962. Unlike many jazz singers, Sheila never was a coy stylist or an American Songbook warbler. Instead, she's a hard-core bebop insider. Married to pianist Duke Jordan [pictured] in the early 1950s, she was a close friend of Charlie Parker's, studied with pianist Lennie Tristano and hosted jam sessions at her loft in New York. Sheila sang at clubs until she met composer-arranger-pianist George Russell, who insisted she record just one song. More about that on Friday.
In Part 1 of my three-part interview with Sheila on the years leading up to her recording career, the 83-year-old singer talks about her raw and painful childhood, how singing helped her survive, and her passion for Parker's music and jazz.
JazzWax: You were born in Detroit but grew up in Summerhill, Penn. Why?
Sheila Jordan: My mother was very young when she had me. She was barely 17. So she sent me off to Summerhill in the coal-mining region to live with my grandmother and grandfather. She’d come home from time to time, but mostly she remained back in Detroit.
JW: What was your mother like?
SJ: She had a serious drinking problem. I didn’t know my father well. If I saw him five times growing up, that was a lot.
JW: What was living with your grandparents like?
SJ: My grandfather was an alcoholic. He was a good man, a quiet man. But he was strict. My grandparents did their best. We went to church every Sunday, and I was raised as a Catholic. But the house was crowded. They already had six people living there. There were two desperately poor families in town, and we were one of them.
JW: What were living conditions like?
SJ: There were no lights or a toilet. Everything was outside the house. Sometimes my grandfather would pay the electric bill but most of the time the power was turned off by the electric company. It was awful, man. But you know what? It made me strong. I knew what the bottom felt like. Everything I got I worked for.
JW: Did you study piano?
SJ: I took a few piano lessons for free from my great-aunt in Pennsylvania. But Aunt Alma was strict and rough. I had tiny hands and they couldn’t reach all the keys. I wanted them to, but they were too small. When my hands couldn’t do what Aunt Alma asked, she’d whack my hands. After she hit me, I didn’t go back.
JW: Did you listen to music there?
SJ: Music was always a part of my life growing up. I listened to our radio—when my grandfather paid the electric bill. But mostly I listened to friends' radios. There was a radio show back then called Your Hit Parade, which featured the top songs of the week. I had this crazy ability to memorize those tunes immediately after hearing them and sang them pretty well. Soon I was on radio stations in nearby Johnstown and Altoona. The shows were these amateur hour things that featured kids.
JW: Do you remember the first songs you sang?
SJ: Yes: My Ideal and He Wears a Pair of Silver Wings [laughs]. I also made up songs. I was often sent off to the store to buy stuff and had to pass a graveyard. That scared me, so I’d sing my head off as I passed it.
JW: How did you end up leaving your grandparents’ house?
SJ: One day my grandfather and grandmother were drinking with my mother. Naturally they got into a nasty fight, and my grandfather told my mother to get out "and take your kid with you." I was 14 years old.
JW: Thinking back, how did that feel?
SJ: I felt so bad. I felt unwanted.
JW: When you arrived back in Detroit with your mother, what was her life like?
SJ: My mother was on her fourth husband at the time. In those days, you didn’t live with a guy. You had to marry him. She was always with creepy guys—gangsters and abusive people like that. [Pictured: Detroit in the '40s]
JW: Had your mother had additional children?
SJ: No, my mother never had any more children. She had had me so young that my aunts and uncles were my age or younger.
JW: In Detroit, you continued to sing?
SJ: Yes, I was always singing to myself. My mother had a rented apartment that came with a radio. She worked at General Motors on the assembly line and as a barmaid after her factory job, so I had lots of time to listen to music.
JW: Where did you go to school?
SJ: I went to Cass Tech in Detroit for a semester but then transferred to Commerce High School. I did this because
I knew I'd have to find a job as soon as I graduated. Cass didn't offer typing classes and other secretarial courses, but Commerce did. During our lunch breaks at Commerce, we'd go across the street to a place that had a jukebox. I loved to listen to music, particularly Duke Ellington. I first got to hear Duke on a record that a kid next door had. My mother also had a record of Benny Goodman’s that I loved, too, but I've forgotten the name.
JW: What was your favorite record on that jukebox?
SJ: Charlie Parker and His Reboppers' Now's the Time. When I first saw the name of the group, I loved the sound of it. So I put my nickel in and played the song. After the first four notes, my hairs stood up. “Oh my god,” I said. I made the decision that day when I heard Bird to spend my life in jazz.
JW: When did you start putting lyrics to Parker’s songs?
SJ: After I heard Bird's records, I wanted to know where the music came from. I wanted to know if there were any people in Detroit playing it. I found out that Bird routinely came to Detroit.
JW: When did you first see Parker perform?
SJ: At the Club Sudan in Detroit. I went with a friend. The club didn’t serve alcohol so underage kids could get in. That’s where I heard Skeeter Spight and Leroy Mitchell sing. They were about my age. After they finished, I went up to them and said, “You guys were great. Can you teach me the words. I love Charlie Parker.” They invited me to rehearse and we became a group—Skeeter, Mitch and Jean, which was my middle name. I used it when I was young because kids teased me by calling me Sheba instead of Sheila.
JW: The Detroit scene was packed with bebop talent then.
SJ: Yes, it was. I met Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris and Kenny Burrell. They were the musicians I grew up with. I was crazy for jazz but couldn’t get into most of the clubs. I was just a teen. I remember trying to get into Club El Sino by changing my mother’s birth certificate and carrying a pack of Lucky Strikes. I also wore a pillbox hat with a veil.
JW: What happened?
SJ: I went up to the door but the doorman wouldn’t let me in. He said, “Go home kid and do your homework.”
JW: Did you?
SJ: Of course not. I went around to the alley with Skeeter and Mitch, who were with me. Bird somehow knew we were back there. He propped open the door, and we sat on garbage cans and listened. He must have told the owner not to close the door under any circumstances.
JW: Did you meet Parker that night?
SJ: Yes. When the set was over, he came out. We told him how much we loved his music. He was wonderful. We were adoring him, and we sang his Confirmation with our words that the guys had written.
JW: Sounds like you were creating lyrics for Parker’s tunes before Dave Lambert and King Pleasure or at least without hearing them.
SJ: Yes, but we weren’t nearly as polished, of course. And we were creating lyrics for the heads, not the solos.
JW: What did Parker think?
JS: Oh man, he loved it. Every time he’d come to Detroit, he wanted to hear us sing. He once said to me, “Kid, you have million-dollar ears.” I sat in with him several times at the clubs and again years later. When I was with Skeeter and Mitch, I started out singing the head part. But they taught me how to improvise on songs and scat the solos. We were loving the music, and our group sat in any time musicians invited us to.
JazzWax notes: On-stage tributes to Sheila Jordan and the rest of the NEA Jazz Masters honorees will be held at 7:30 p.m. on January 10 at Rose Theater at New York's Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.
If you're unable to attend, you can watch on your computer from anywhere in the world by going to arts.gov or jalc.org (7:30 p.m., EST). The concert also will be broadcast live on WBGO-FM in New York and on SiriusXM Satellite Radio's Real Jazz Channel XM67. A video archive of the concert will also be available at arts.gov following the event.
Sheila tells me she is working on a memoir with writer Ellen Johnson. More on Sheila Jordan at her website here.
JazzWax tracks: Sheila Jordan's very first recording was Yesterdays on Looking Out: Jazz Bass Baroque, an album led by bassist Peter Ind and recorded in 1960. Sheila's not crazy about the track. "Peter's a great British bass player. I met him while I was studying with Lennie Tristano." You can find it at iTunes and Amazon.
Sheila's first monumental recording was You Are My Sunshine, with George Russell on his The Outer View (Riverside) in 1962. More on the dramatic story behind this track on Friday. You'll find it on the album at iTunes and Amazon.
A great intro to Sheila is her first album, Portrait of Sheila (Blue Note), recorded in 1962 with Barry Galbraith (g) Steve Swallow (b) and Denzil Best (d). You'll find it at iTunes and Amazon.
JazzWax clip: Here's Sheila Jordan singing Bobby Timmons' Dat Dere from Portrait of Sheila...
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