Piano | 1922-2006

Duke Jordan earned his nickname at fourteen through his obsessive devotion to Duke Ellington's recordings, and by the time he was twenty-five he was playing piano in Charlie Parker's quintet alongside Miles Davis, Tommy Potter and Max Roach. The 1947-48 Parker Dial sessions, which produced "Dewey Square", "Bongo Bop", "Bird of Paradise" and "Embraceable You", placed Jordan at the centre of bebop's foundational recordings, his lyrical, harmonically sophisticated touch a distinct counterweight to the ferocity around him. He wrote "Jordu" in 1953, a composition that became a standard when Clifford Brown adopted it the following year and that has been recorded regularly ever since. His trajectory after the Parker years was uneven: time accompanying Sonny Stitt and Stan Getz, solo sessions for Signal and Prestige, a contribution to the soundtrack of Roger Vadim's 1959 French film "Les Liaisons Dangereuses", and then, during much of the 1960s, driving a taxi in New York. He re-emerged through SteepleChase in 1973, recording his first of 24 sessions for the Danish label, and moved permanently to Copenhagen in 1978, where he performed and recorded until his death. He was married to jazz singer Sheila Jordan from 1952 to 1962. Jordan died in Valby, Copenhagen, on 8 August 2006, aged 84.