Sheila Jordan & Arild Andersen - Sheila (1978 Japanese SteepleChase Vinyl LP)

Sheila Jordan & Arild Andersen - Sheila | Vinyl LP - 1978 Japanese SteepleChase (15PJ-2029, Nippon Phonogram)

Sheila Jordan spent most of her career as one of jazz's best-kept secrets. She grew up in a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania, moved to Detroit as a teenager, fell in love with Charlie Parker's music, and married Parker's pianist Duke Jordan in 1952. She recorded a landmark album for Blue Note in 1962 (Portrait of Sheila, the first vocal album Alfred Lion ever produced), and then largely disappeared from records for over a decade, working a day job at an advertising agency and singing only part-time. She never compromised her approach to suit commercial expectations, and the voice-and-bass duo was the purest expression of her artistry. On Portrait of Sheila she had insisted on including a voice-bass duet ("Dat Dere" with Steve Swallow), and had originally wanted the whole album in that format before Blue Note refused. Fifteen years later, with SteepleChase's Nils Winther giving her complete freedom, she finally made the album she'd always wanted. The format demands total commitment. With only a bass for accompaniment, every pitch, every rhythmic choice, every interpretive risk is exposed. Jordan thrives on that exposure. Her intonation is fearless, her phrasing conversational, and her willingness to bend a melody or land on an unexpected note comes from her deep grounding in bebop.

"Lush Life" is the centrepiece, Strayhorn's harmonically demanding ballad about disillusionment and lost time, sung by Jordan with a directness that cuts through the song's sophistication to its emotional core. Andersen, one of the finest bassists Europe has produced (he recorded for ECM throughout this period and played with Jan Garbarek and George Russell), is a full partner rather than an accompanist, his lines weaving around Jordan's voice with a melodic sensibility that fills the harmonic space a piano would normally occupy. "Don't Explain," the Billie Holiday song, is devastating in this stripped-down setting. "The Saga of Harrison Crabfeathers" is a Steve Kuhn composition (Jordan would form a quartet with Kuhn two years later). "Better Than Anything" and "The Lady" show her range across the emotional spectrum. The communication between the two musicians is the whole album.

This is the 1978 Japanese pressing on SteepleChase 15PJ-2029, manufactured by Nippon Phonogram Co., Ltd.