Louis Jordan - Radio Shows, 1944-1946

Recently, I posted a Louis Jordan album here. I'm kind of amazed that I was able to post some music of his that was unreleased (or only released on "grey market" quasi-bootlegs), because his music dates so far back that you'd think all of it would have either been officially released by now or lost forever. But it turns out there's more unreleased Louis Jordan music out there. I don't know of any decent sounding live recordings in front of an audience from his 1940s prime era, but this is close. These are different performances of his songs that were played on radio shows.

What radio shows exactly these come from is mostly a mystery to me. The source bootleg recordings I found had little to no documentation. I've had to piece much of this together using guesswork and logic. For instance, knowing when each of his singles came out allowed me to guestimate the years for these sessions. That said, the majority of these performances come from radio shows done by the US military during World War II. American soldiers were stationed all over the world, and they wanted to be entertained. Louis Jordan was one of the most popular musical artists of the era, especially with black audiences, so it made sense that he performed on armed forces radio a lot. And since those radio performances were shipped out all over the world (on what were called V-discs), some of them survived to this day.

I find this is an interesting slice of life for life in the 1940s, especially life during World War II. If you listen to the lyrics, you'll notice that some of the songs specifically address issues of the time, such as shortages in "You Can't Get That No More" or going from the military back to civilian life in "Reconversion Blues." And the title of "(My Feet Are Killing Me Marching In) The Infantry Blues" speaks for itself.

I'm really surprised that these recordings haven't been properly released, because the sound quality is pretty good. There even are some songs that he didn't release otherwise, such as "Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe," "You Was Right Baby," and "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie," or only came out in different versions much later, like "Ofay and Oxford Gray." By the way, that latter song is an appeal to racial harmony that wasn't released at the time because dealing with any racial issue apparently was too hot of a topic to touch.

I have another album of his US military radio shows from 1943, but the sound quality is a little bit poorer. Please let me know if you're interested in that. I'm veering so far from the rest of the music I post here that I have doubts if many people are interested.

If you're not that familiar with Louis Jordan's stuff, you might want to give this a shot. This isn't exactly a "best of," but his popularity was peaking during these years, and many of his biggest hits are here. The other songs are almost always lively and entertaining.

This album is 58 minutes long. And by the way, if anyone can help me pin down the exact sourcing for some of the song's mp3 tags, I'd appreciate it.

01 Knock Me a Kiss (Louis Jordan)
02 Five Guys Named Moe (Louis Jordan)
03 Jumpin' at the Jubilee (Louis Jordan)
04 talk (Louis Jordan)
05 You Can't Get That No More (Louis Jordan)
06 The End of My Worry (Louis Jordan)
07 I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town (Louis Jordan)
08 Better Off without You (Louis Jordan)
09 talk (Louis Jordan)
10 The Chicks I Pick Are Slender and Tender and Tall (Louis Jordan)
11 talk (Louis Jordan)
12 [My Feet Are Killing Me Marching In] The Infantry Blues (Louis Jordan)
13 How High Am I (Louis Jordan)
14 Hey, Now Let's Live (Louis Jordan)
15 talk (Louis Jordan)
16 Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby (Louis Jordan)
17 Caldonia (Louis Jordan)
18 talk (Louis Jordan)
19 Bahama Joe (Louis Jordan)
20 Nobody but Me (Louis Jordan)
21 talk (Louis Jordan)
22 You Was Right Baby (Louis Jordan)
23 talk (Louis Jordan)
24 Ofay and Oxford Gray (Louis Jordan)
25 talk (Louis Jordan)
26 Reconversion Blues (Louis Jordan)
27 talk (Louis Jordan)
28 Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe (Louis Jordan)
29 talk (Louis Jordan)
30 Don't Worry 'bout That Mule (Louis Jordan)
31 Pinetop's Boogie Woogie [Instrumental] (Louis Jordan)
32 Choo-Choo Ch' Boogie (Louis Jordan)
33 Let the Good Times Roll (Louis Jordan)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15262607/LouisJ_1944-1946_RdioShows_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I wanted to do something that would fit the artistic style of the 1940s. That's really hard to get right this many decades later though. So I got around that problem by using a color poster to one of his 1940s movies. All I did was crop the rectangular poster to fit a square album cover space, then remove some text and add in some other text.

Louis Jordan - Unique Soundies & Radio Broadcasts (1942-1947)

Here's something out of left field compared to what I usually post here. I've never posted music from the 1940s before. Generally speaking, I only have a limited appreciation of music before the rock and roll era (which began around 1955), but I'll make a big exception for Louis Jordan. I enjoy the "jump blues" style that he was the king of. In my opinion, it was the most rocking music prior to rock and roll, and it has lots of humor and period charm. I think he gets underappreciated these days compared to some other famous pre-rock and roll artists, but he was massively popular with black audiences in the 1940s, and with good reason.

I never posted any of his music prior to this, because everything I had from him was officially released, and I don't like to post that sort of thing unless I have a special reason. But recently I discovered that there's a bunch of his songs that STILL have never been officially released, and they're generally really good! 

The reason many of these recordings exist due to a strange, short-term phenomenon called "soundies." You can see the Wikipedia entry about that here:

Soundies - Wikipedia

Here's how I see it. When soundies began in 1940, television as we know it hadn't even been invented yet. Soundies were much like music videos of later decades, giving fans a rare chance to actually see as well as hear the musicians they loved. You put a dime into a machine and then were able to watch a visual performance of a song. Louis Jordan made more soundies than most, probably because he was so popular, plus he and his band had a lot of visual charisma that fit the format well. At the same time, albums hadn't caught on much yet (his first album wasn't released until 1946, despite him having many hits prior to that), so he could only release a limited number of songs as singles. Thus, many of the songs he performed as soundies were never otherwise recorded in the studio. 

I was able to find a collection of his soundie videos (through SoulseekQT) and converted them to mp3s. There are many more than what I've presented here, but I've only included songs that I believe aren't on any of his archival albums. In addition, about half of the songs are ones that he performed for various radio shows but again weren't recorded in the studio. (Technically, many of these songs have been released on album, but I believe those are dubious "grey market" releases that aren't officially sanctioned, so I don't count those.)

By the way, the soundies phenomenon ended in 1947, when the main company making them folded. I suspect that was due to a changing market after World War II (which ended in 1945), especially the sudden rise of television.

I think many of these songs are among his best. I particularly like the first one, "Old Man Mose." You can watch the soundie for that one and many of the others on YouTube. In that video, he gives an amusing parody performance of an evangelical preacher.

The only problem with these soundie recordings is that some of them are fairly rough. There were a couple of songs I excluded because they were too rough. There are three more I've only included as bonus tracks, due to sound quality issues. A couple more that I did include here, such as "Good Morning Heartache" are borderline. But the most of the songs sound surprisingly good for unreleased recordings going all the way back to the 1940s.

This album is 37 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks.

By the way, I've recently come across some other interesting and rare Louis Jordan music. Let me know if you're interested in me posting that here, since this type of music is different from what I usually post.

01 Old Man Mose (Louis Jordan)
02 Down, Down, Down (Louis Jordan)
03 Fuzzy Wuzzy (Louis Jordan)
04 Jordan Jive [Instrumental] (Louis Jordan)
05 If You Can't Smile and Say Yes [Please Don't Cry and Say No] (Louis Jordan)
06 Let Your Hair Down, Baby (Louis Jordan)
07 When I Grow Too Old to Dream (Louis Jordan)
08 Re-Bop [Instrumental] (Louis Jordan)
09 Baby, You're Just Too Darned Good to Be True (Louis Jordan)
10 Seventh Avenue (Louis Jordan)
11 Honey Child (Louis Jordan)
12 Tillie (Louis Jordan)
13 Sweatin' on Swing Street [Instrumental] (Louis Jordan)
14 Good Morning Heartache (Louis Jordan)
15 Wham, Sam [Dig Them Gams] (Louis Jordan)

Hold On (Louis Jordan)
In the Land of the Buffalo Nickel (Louis Jordan)
Long Legged Lizzie (Louis Jordan)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15262603/LouisJ_1942-1947_UnqueSoundiesRadioBroadcasts_atse.zip.html

I'm happy at how the cover art turned out. I based it on a poster for a 1946 movie called "Beware" that starred Louis Jordan. I cropped it, changed the text, and made other changes to get the best parts of the rectangular poster into a square space. I also added the record company logo and a couple other little touches to mimic the look of his earliest albums.