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Tympany Five | |
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![]() Louis Jordan's Tympany Five in New York City, between 1946 and 1948 | |
Past members | Jimmy Peterson, piano and chief arranger |
Tympany Five was a successful and influential American rhythm and blues and jazz dance band founded by Louis Jordan in 1938. [1] The group was composed of a horn section of three to five different pieces and also drums, double bass, guitar and piano.
Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five created many of the most influential songs of the early R&B and rock and roll era, including "Let The Good Times Roll", "Keep A-Knockin'", and "Caldonia". Carl Hogan's opening riff to "Ain't That Just Like A Woman" later became one of rock's most recognizable riffs in Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode".[ citation needed ]
Jordan first formed the band as "The Elks Rendezvous Band", named after the Elks Rendezvous jazz joint in Harlem. The original lineup of the sextet was Jordan (saxes, vocals), Courtney Williams (trumpet), Lem Johnson (tenor sax), Clarence Johnson (piano), Charlie Drayton (bass) and Walter Martin (drums). The various lineups of the Tympany Five (which often featured two or three extra players) [1] included Bill Jennings and Carl Hogan on guitar, renowned pianist-arrangers Wild Bill Davis and Bill Doggett, "Shadow" Wilson and Chris Columbus on drums and Dallas Bartley on bass. Jordan played alto, tenor and baritone saxophone and sang the lead vocal on most numbers. The band found fame after opening for The Mills Brothers at the Capitol Lounge in Chicago in 1941.
In 1941, they were transferred from Decca's "race" label to its Sepia Series, featuring artists thought to have the crossover potential to appeal to both black and white audiences. Jordan was always proud of the fact that the Tympany Five's music was just as popular with white as it was with black people. [2]
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame states that two of the most important originators of Rhythm and blues were Joe Turner and Louis Jordan, with his Tympany Five. The two artists helped to lay "the foundation for R&B in the 1940s, cutting one swinging rhythm & blues masterpiece after another". [3] The Hall also describes Jordan as "the Father of Rhythm & Blues," "the Grandfather of Rock 'n' Roll" and "King of the Juke Boxes". [4] The Blues Foundation also suggests that Jordan was a precursor to R&B: "Louis Jordan was the biggest African-American star of his era and that his Caldonia reached "the top of the Race Records chart, as it was known prior to the introduction of term Rhythm & Blues in 1949". [5] His Saturday Night Fish Fry fell into the Jump blues genre [6] but is viewed by some as a precursor to rock n'roll. In fact, Chuck Berry once made this comment about Jordan: He was "the first person I heard play rock and roll". [7]
Jordan's last recordings were made for the French Black & Blue label in 1973 and issued as I Believe in Music. The session included Irv Cox tenor in saxophone, Duke Burrell on piano, bassist John Duke and drummer Archie Taylor. [8] [9]
Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is an African-American genre of popular music that originated within African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to African Americans, at a time when "rocking, jazz based music ... [with a] heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular. In the commercial rhythm and blues music typical of the 1950s through the 1970s, the bands usually consisted of a piano, one or two guitars, bass, drums, one or more saxophones, and sometimes background vocalists. R&B lyrical themes often encapsulate the African-American history and experience of pain and the quest for freedom and joy, as well as triumphs and failures in terms of societal racism, oppression, relationships, economics, and aspirations.
Bill Haley & His Comets was an American rock and roll band formed in 1947 and continuing until Haley's death in 1981. The band was also known as Bill Haley and the Comets and Bill Haley's Comets. From late 1954 to late 1956, the group recorded nine Top 20 singles, one of which was number one and three that were Top Ten. The single "Rock Around the Clock" was the best-selling rock single in the history of the genre and maintained that position for several years.
Louis Thomas Jordan was an American saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and bandleader who was popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "the King of the Jukebox", he earned his highest profile towards the end of the swing era. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an "early influence" in 1987.
Jump blues is an up-tempo style of blues, jazz, and boogie woogie usually played by small groups and featuring horn instruments. It was popular in the 1940s and was a precursor of rhythm and blues and rock and roll. Appreciation of jump blues was renewed in the 1990s as part of the swing revival.
Kings of Rhythm are an American music group formed in the late 1940s in Clarksdale, Mississippi and led by Ike Turner through to his death in 2007. Turner would retain the name of the band throughout his career, although the group has undergone considerable line-up changes over time.
The origins of rock and roll are complex. Rock and roll emerged as a defined musical style in the United States in the early to mid-1950s. It derived most directly from the rhythm and blues music of the 1940s, which itself developed from earlier blues, the beat-heavy jump blues, boogie woogie, up-tempo jazz, and swing music. It was also influenced by gospel, country and western, and traditional folk music. Rock and roll in turn provided the main basis for the music that, since the mid-1960s, has been generally known simply as rock music.
Boogie is a repetitive, swung note or shuffle rhythm, "groove" or pattern used in blues which was originally played on the piano in boogie-woogie music. The characteristic rhythm and feel of the boogie was then adapted to guitar, double bass, and other instruments. The earliest recorded boogie-woogie song was in 1916. By the 1930s, Swing bands such as Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Louis Jordan all had boogie hits. By the 1950s, boogie became incorporated into the emerging rockabilly and rock and roll styles. In the late 1980s and the early 1990s country bands released country boogies. Today, the term "boogie" usually refers to dancing to pop, disco, or rock music.
"Saturday Night Fish Fry" is a jump blues song written by Louis Jordan and Ellis Lawrence Walsh, best known through the version recorded by Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five. The recording is considered to be one of the "excellent and commercially successful" examples of the jump blues genre.
Let the Good Times Roll: The Music of Louis Jordan is the thirty seventh studio album by B. B. King, released in 1999. It is a tribute album to jazz saxophonist and singer Louis Jordan, and is made up entirely of covers of songs written or performed by Jordan. The album was released in 1999 on MCA Records.
"Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby" is a song written by Louis Jordan and Billy Austin. The song's first recording, by Jordan, was made on October 4, 1943. It was released as the B-side of a single with "G.I. Jive" with the title "Is You Is or Is You Ain't ". The song reached No. 1 on the US folk/country charts, number two for three weeks on the pop chart, and number three on the R&B chart.
"Caldonia" is a jump blues song, first recorded in 1945 by Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five. Although credited to Fleecie Moore, his wife at the time, Jordan is the actual songwriter. The song was a hit for Jordan as well as several other musicians.
"Choo Choo Ch'Boogie" is a popular song written by Vaughn Horton, Denver Darling, and Milt Gabler.
"Let the Good Times Roll" is a jump blues song recorded in 1946 by Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five. A mid-tempo twelve-bar blues, the song became a blues standard and one of Jordan's best-known songs.
"Ain't That Just Like a Woman (They'll Do It Every Time)" is a 1946 song written by Claude Demetrius and Fleecie Moore and recorded by Louis Jordan and Tympany Five. The song reached number one on the R&B Jukebox chart for two weeks and peaked at number seventeen on the pop chart. Chuck Berry, who acknowledged the influence of both Louis Jordan and Carl Hogan, copied the latter's guitar intro to the song for his 1958 classic "Johnny B. Goode".
"Ain't Nobody Here but Us Chickens" is a jump blues song, written by Alex Kramer and Joan Whitney. Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five recorded the song on June 26, 1946, and Decca Records released it on a 78 rpm record. It was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2013.
"Early in the Mornin'" or "'Early in the Morning" is a song that was recorded by Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five in 1947. It is an early example of a blues which incorporates Afro-Cuban rhythms and percussive instruments. "Early in the Mornin'" became a hit, reaching number three in Billboard magazine's race records chart.
Carl D. Hogan was an American jazz and rhythm and blues guitarist and bassist. He is known for playing the lead guitar riff on Louis Jordan's "Ain't That Just Like a Woman " which was later imitated by Chuck Berry for his hit "Johnny B. Goode".
"We Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town" is a song originally recorded on September 3, 1936, by Piedmont blues musician Casey Bill Weldon. Weldon performed it as a solo piece, with vocals and acoustic guitar plus piano and double bass accompaniment.
Caldonia is a two reel American musical short film directed by William Forest Crouch and released by Astor Pictures in 1945. The film stars musician Louis Jordan and was produced by his manager Berle Adams. The film includes four songs performed by Jordan and his band: "Caldonia", "Honey Child", "Tillie" and "Buzz Me", which were also released individually by the Soundies Distributing Corporation of America.
"Salt Pork, West Virginia" is a song attributed to Fleecie Moore and William J. Tennyson Jr., performed by Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five, and released on the Decca label. It peaked at No. 2 on Billboard's race record chart and remained on the chart for 15 weeks. It ranked No. 8 on the magazine's list of the most played race records of 1946.
His smaller, tighter groups — the Tympany Four and Tympany Five — developed a loose, hard-driving sound that came to be known as "jump music."