Duke Jordan - Flight To Jordan (1992 Japanese Blue Note Vinyl LP)

Duke Jordan - Flight to Jordan | Vinyl LP - 1992 Japanese Blue Note Reissue (BST 84046, Blue Note 4000 Series Ultra Collection, Toshiba-EMI)

Flight to Jordan is the one album Duke Jordan made as a leader for Blue Note, and it is a small injustice that he never made another. Jordan had been on the front line of bebop as Charlie Parker's pianist in the late 1940s, but his writing came into its own later, and by this 1960 date he had six strong originals ready. The title track opens in a brooding minor key before it lifts, "Squawkin'" came out of a scene he watched on the street in his Brooklyn neighbourhood, and "Starbright" and "Deacon Joe" show the tender, pensive side of his playing. The front line is the draw. Stanley Turrentine brings a bluesy, Texas-tinged tenor, and the Jamaican trumpeter Dizzy Reece answers him with something cooler and drier, while Reggie Workman and Art Taylor hold a firm centre. Rudy Van Gelder recorded it and Alfred Lion produced, and it sounds exactly like prime Blue Note hard bop should.

What makes the record a little poignant is what followed, which was very little. Jordan's career stalled through the 1960s, and for a stretch he was driving a taxi in New York before Danish audiences rediscovered him in the 1970s and he began recording again in volume for SteepleChase. That gap is part of why Flight to Jordan stands slightly apart in the catalogue, a self-contained high point from a player the label never brought back.

This copy is the 1992 Japanese reissue from Toshiba-EMI's Blue Note 4000 Series Ultra Collection, a series prized by collectors for its faithful laminated reproductions of the original Reid Miles sleeves. It carries catalogue number BST 84046 and comes in a laminated sleeve with OBI and the four-page series insert.