Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five

Music that lives on and on in eternity. The music of my youth.

I know what you're thinking: "A set of five discs of the best of Louis Jordan? 131 tracks of great jump blues and swing? For this price? There's got to be something wrong here."Amazingly, there isn't. These five discs are superbly produced, placing Louis Jordan's career in chronological order from 1938 to 1950, and the sound quality is top-notch. Almost all his classics are here, "Caldonia," "Saturday Night Fish Fry," "Knock Me a Kiss," "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie," plus many surprises you might never have heard before. The only major songs missing are the good numbers he turned out after 1950, when his popularity faded, like "I Want You to Be My Baby." But otherwise: this is the whole deal and then some, for a pretty incredible price.Louis Jordan is the link between big band swing of the thirties and the rock `n' roll of the fifties. Starting out as a saxophonist in Chick Webb's 1930s big band, Louis struck out on his own in 1938 with his small group The Tympany Five (not always five people, but the name stuck anyway). They played hard-driving blues swing numbers with creative, crazy lyrics, and scored hit after hit on both the R&B and pop charts for ten years. While jazz drifted toward be-bop, which wasn't danceable, Louis Jordan offered the dancing hepcats and new kind of music to sweat and swing to. His band was a swing dancer's dream, and still is. No musician had a bigger effect on the modern swing movement than Louis Jordan, and his numbers are endlessly covered by other bands. But there's nothing like the real deal: Jordan swung hard on sax, had a wicked sense of humor, was a born entertainer, and lead a band that seemed to be having more fun than anyone.Each disc comes with its own liner notes booklet, with information on the history and development of the band (plus tidbits about Jordan's busy personal life). Here's what the discs cover:Disc A: 1938-1940. The weakest disc, since the band is still figuring out their style, and the recording technology is poorer so the sound is muddier. Jordan hasn't yet discovered his signature songs, but there are some excellent pieces here, like "At the Swing Cat's Ball," "June Tenth Jamboree," the slow and sultry "Pompton Turnpike," and "Oh Boy, I'm in the Groove" (a title that fits Jordan perfectly).Disc B: 1941-1944. After completely changing the original band, Jordan started to become a sensation and scored huge hit records. Boogie woogie takes over the sound, and the bands start swinging hard. The classics here are the sexy "Knock Me a Kiss," the fast and furiously funny "Five Guys Named Moe," and the wonderful slow dance "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby." With the advent of WWII, Jordan recorded timely and funny war tunes: "Ration Blues," "You Can't Get that No More," and "G.I. Jive." Of the lesser-known pieces, the best is the infectious swing-stomper, "Saxawoogie." It's a boogie, it's a woogie, it's a banger!Disc C: 1944-46. "Reconversion Blues" bids goodbye to war, but Jordan keeps pulling out even bigger hits. "Caldonia Boogie" is one of his signature numbers, along with "Salt Pork West Virginia," "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie" (probably his most loved song today), "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens," and my personal favorite, "Reet, Petite and Gone." Tunes you might not know, but which you'll love: "How Long Must I Wait for You?" (Train number one is gone...train number two is gone...) and "Jack You're Dead." Jordan also sings duets with Bing Crosby ("My Baby Said Yes," "Your Socks Don't Match") and Ella Fitzgerald ("Stone Cold Dead in the Market," a Latin piece, and "It's So Easy").Disc D: 1947-1949. Actually, there's no music from 1948 because of a recording ban. Jordan's humor really blooms on this, the funniest of the CDs. The big hits here: "Barnyard Boogie," "Coleslaw," and "Beans and Cornbread." Most of the great numbers here are surprises, like "Chicky-Mo, Craney Crow," the teasing "Daddy-O," and the all-talk comedy piece "Friendship." Jordan also dips into West Indian music with "Early in the Morning" and "Run Joe."Disc E: 1949-1950. The best disc; Jordan's last big hits before his popularity vanished were amongst his best and most creative (he uses the organ a lot on these numbers): the boppin' instrumental "Onion," the lengthy "Saturday Night Fish Fry," the slow-simmering "Blue Light Boogie," and the silly "Chartreuse." He sings with Ella again on the awesome "Baby It's Cold Outside" and "I'll Never Be Free." He teams up with the other Louis, Louis Armstrong, for "Life is So Peculiar" and "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You." These two jokers were made for each other.Don't turn down this amazing deal. The amount of great music you get for the price here is astonishing. All swing, R&B, and early rock fans should grab this now.

Simply put, for its value this is one of the greatest collections of CD's of utter joy and happiness around.This multivolume set covers the early music and musical peak of the musical and comical link between Bert Williams and Louis Armstrong (LJ's dad was a friend of Bert's and used his records to inspire his son, and Satch was a mentor and occasional collaborator with LJ) and the first generation of R&B rockers (Ray Chalres, the Godfather, B.B. King, and Little Richard have all sang their praises to LJ).Some of his really rare early music is found on the early discs. It took him a while to find his style of humorous stories told to a beat and inspired sax playing, but there are still some diamonds in the rough here. "Swinging in the Coconut Trees" is an amusing and atmospheric instrumental, "Keep a Knockin" was later covered by Little Richard, "Do You Call That a Buddy" is a good comical blues with some nice background singing by the T-5, "June Teenth Jamboree" is probably the first record to deal with this early black holiday (LJ was astudent of Black folklore, and incorporated it into his music), and "What's the Use of Gettin' Sober" is the kind of wild, authentic black humor that would put Amos & Andy's "PseudoNegro" antics to shame.Later on, we get into the familiar bits of inspired nuttiness and great musicianship. "Caldonia," "Sat Nite Fish Fry," "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie," "Beware" (and its sequel "Look Out Sister" which has some hilarious early rapping), and what is to me the funniest R&B record of all time, the knee-slapping floor-pounding classic BEANS & CORNBREAD.We also get some of the calypso tunes with Jordan's expertly delivered "Jafakean" accent such as "Run Joe," "Early in the morning," "Stone Cold dead in the Market," and "Push Ka peesh Kee Pie." The West Indians were flattered by these tunes and LJ made succesful tours of the West Indies.However, the set ends at about 1950, just before our man's career peaked. But his later material is available elsewhere on Amazon. In either case, whenver you come home from a hard day at work, put this set on your CD player. It'll put your psychologist out of work!

Louis Jordan has never received the acclaim he deserves for building many of the bridges from Jazz and Swing to Rock and Roll. Of course, some of his songs like "Barnyard Boogie" (Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens) led him to - at best - be a familiar voice and widely loved. At worst - he was often totally miscast as some sort of novelty act. With the recent resurgence and consciousness-rasing about the great history of jazz in America, it's about time for Louis Jordan to get his due. His rhythms have been stolen and reworked by every rock and roll band in history - and I suspect that would be just fine with Louis. His music is infectious; his view of the world, sublimely playful. That said, anyone who puts on this music and does not find their day brightened and their spirits lifted, their foot tapping and their fingers popping must be dead from the heart out. This cat could SWING!

Louis Jordan was one of the prime forces in directing us to the music we have today. Chuck Berry obviously copped licks from Carl Hogan, the guitar player for Louis in the mid 40's. Louis played Blues, boogie Woogie, Swing, Jazz and pop tunes with a drive and energy all his own. Recently heard a conversation between a couple of coworkers where they were arguing who had done the first rap record. Needless to say their jaws dropped when I said they were not even close because Louis Jordan had that style and rythmn down in 1949! Check out "Saturday Night Fish Fry" and see if you don't agree. The rythmn, the drive, rappin' a story, are all there. Just one of the many nuggets to be mined in this collection. These are the roots of popular music. Real musicians who did it not just for the money, but for the love and the creativity of it.

I've been a great Louis Jordan fan for many years after seeing him perform Caldonia on a BBC2 rhythm and blues weekend.I bought many of his vynyl albums and later CD's unfortunatley over many years of use both got scratched so when I saw this box set and the tracks on it I realised that this box set is an excellent collection of his tracks.He was called the "Juke Box King" and it wasn't for nothing.He was probably the best performing artists of his time and a massive influence on many others.Because he was one of the best he had some of the best musicans in the Tympany Five and song writers too.Swing Jive Boogie Blues they're all on this album if you don't like the music listen to the lyrics witty, funny and much much more there's not subject he doesn't sing a song about.It's not everybody's cup of tea but I absolutely love him.If you want a taster check him out on youtube;Caldonia;Deacon Jones;Ain't that just like a woman and more.

some good some music never heard off

Excellent a very talented musician and song writer. Superb set of tunes

Compared with some Louis Jordan CDs (for example, the Essence of) the sound quality of this set is superb. All the Louis Jordan tracks you could want, and with fantastic sound quality. The best!

Fab!