Sheila Jordan

Night Train continues the November Saxophone Month feature, this time with the help of two players born on this date – Jerome Richardson (as a leader, and with Tiny Grimes and Eddie “Lockjaw Davis”), and Seldon Powell (with Betty Carter and Johnny “Hammond” Smith), including work they did together as guests with both Mose Allison and Oscar Peterson. We’ll also hear saxophonists Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Cannonball Adderley, Hamiet Blueitt, and Brent Jensen. New music tonight comes from Slide Attack, the Montreal Jazz Trio, Jon Batiste (on an album to benefit the Jazz Foundation’s Musicians Emergency Fund), Art Hirahara, Graham Dechter, and Bruce Forman/John Clayton/Jeff Hamilton (on a salute to The Poll Winners lineup of Barney Kessel, Ray Brown and Shelly Manne using their original instruments).

At the age of 92 and still going strong, singer-songwriter Sheila Jordan has been one of the most revered and utterly unique voices in jazz for decades. Beginning with her debut album, 1963’s Portrait of Sheila on Blue Note Records, she pioneered a bebop-inflected approach to singing accompanied only by solo bass (in that case, a duet with Steve Swallow on one of her signature tunes, Bobby Timmons’ “Dat Dere”). Following the release of that album, however, Sheila retreated from the scene to concentrate on raising her daughter, working as a typist for the next two decades and not recording as a leader again for more than a dozen years.

It is often intriguing hearing jazz performers at the very beginning of their career. While some are already fully-formed and quite recognizable, others only give hints of what they were to become. Sheila Jordan, a delightful, very intelligent, and chance-taking vocalist (and one who is masterful at improvising lyrics), was...

Though Sheila Jordan’s reputation has never flagged—at 92, she’s long been venerated as a singer’s singer—the general consensus is that her best record is her first, the rare Blue Note vocal album Portrait of Sheila (1963). That stunning debut whets the appetite for Comes Love, a recently unearthed collection of 11 standards recorded in a New York studio more than two years before Portrait. (Jordan has no recollection of the occasion, or even those who accompanied her that June day in 1960, although she was playing Greenwich Village with the likes of Steve Swallow and Herbie Nichols at the time.)

Sheila Jordan falls into that unique category of vocalist whose voice, once heard, is unlikely to be mistaken for anyone else. Now at ninety-two, she continues to perform regularly, if not frequently, most recently in August 2021 at Jazz In The Park in Peekskill New York. This release entitled Comes Love: Lost Session 1960 was recorded on June 19, 1960 at Olmsted Sound Studios NYC for Chatam Records backed by unidentified accompanists. Ms. Jordan was thirty-one at the time of this recording but, perhaps understandably, she has no recollection of this session nor the names of the musicians supporting her. This outing pre-dates by more than two years her official debut recording for Blue Note Records entitled Portrait Of Sheila on which she was accompanied by guitarist Barry Galbraith, bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Denzil Best.

This is jazz perfection as you rarely hear it in any genre nowadays. There are too many highlights on this album to spend time describing them all. The album is flawless in the sense that there isn’t a bad or indifferent track or solo from start to finish. Bird would have enjoyed this tribute because it really does come from the heart.

The 1950s were a golden age for female jazz singers. They sang arrangements that were often more sophisticated than the material handed to girl singers in the swing era, and yet a genuinely popular audience existed for them. They weren’t performing for fellow conservatory students. They were entertainers who had achieved a high level of artistry.

This year, the Pace Center for Girls Volusia-Flagler is celebrating 25 years of service, having transformed over 2,500 girls' lives in the local community. For new Executive Director Sheila Jordan, it's a milestone that celebrates these girls becoming productive contributors to society despite the challenges they faced early in life. She's spent the last 30 years working in youth development and leadership, and Jordan brought nearly three decades of experience when she started at the local center in October 2020.