Sheila Jordan

Sheila Jordan ranks among the most inventive figures in jazz singing, bringing a modest vocal range to its richest expression through inventive phrasing and nuanced control. Few performers rival her ability to spin coherent, often rhyming lines during improvisation, and she excels equally as a scat soloist while conveying deep feeling in slower material. Even so, these strengths did not spare her from holding an ordinary day job through most of the 1960s and 1970s.

She began piano lessons at eleven and first explored vocalese inside a small singing group. After settling in New York in the 1950s she married pianist Duke Jordan, a union that lasted from 1952 to 1962, took private study with Lennie Tristano, and appeared in city nightclubs. George Russell invited her to record an unconventional version of “You Are My Sunshine,” after which she became one of the rare vocalists granted her own Blue Note session in 1962. A full decade elapsed before she returned to the studio, during which time she worked with Carla Bley and Roswell Rudd and co-directed a band with Steve Kuhn in the late 1970s.

Her 1977 duet album with bassist Arild Andersen for SteepleChase remains a standout, and she later joined forces repeatedly with bassist Harvie Swartz. Only with the 1980s did Jordan begin performing jazz full time, at last earning the wider notice that had been delayed since the previous generation. In addition to the Blue Note date she has led recordings for East Wind, Grapevine, SteepleChase, Palo Alto, Blackhawk, and Muse, reappearing in 1999 with the album Jazz Child.