From Barrelhouse to Broadway: The Musical Odyssey of Joe Jordan
This is an amazing CD, for it expands our knowledge and appreciation of the music of Joe Jordan exponentially! Jasen and Tichenor's book "Rags and Ragtime", an indispensable source of ragtime information, devotes only 10 lines to Jordan's biography, while the booklet in this seminal recording by the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra contains 30 pages of carefully researched information including many pictures. The PRO's director, Rick Benjamin, has done yeoman work, for not only did he write all the liner notes but he also arranged the scores and even contributed three piano solos. The results are truly outstanding. By hearing to the music and following the printed information, the listener is drawn into Jordan's life, from his birth and early childhood in Cincinnati, to his ragtime immersion in St. Louis, to his musical leadership and composition at the Pekin Theater in Chicago, to his importance in the role of the Black musical in New York, to his elevation as a senior statesman in the history of music from Black composers and conductors in America. It is indeed an amazing odyssey! The PRO is a thoroughly professional theater orchestra and the scores are rendered with verve and precision. Two classically trained vocalists, Bernadette Boerckel and Trevor Smith, handle the songs with wit and aplomb, and the overall result of the disc is as complete a musical picture of a musician/composer as you could possibly get from 70 minutes of recorded sound. There are even two excerpts at the end from a 1962 interview with Jordan, conducted by Bob Darch, and two pages of bibliography for those scholars who are itching to dig deeper. While Jordan is remembered today mainly for launching the career of Fanny Brice with his song, "Lovie Joe", and for the trio in "That Teasin' Rag", which was appropiated wholesale by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band to create the "Original Dixiland One-Step", there is so much more about the man that needs to be studied and appreciated. With its great p --ragtimers.org/reviews/...the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra's performances sound as authentic as you could wish (in up-to-date sound, of course). They are bouncy, joyous and full of vaudevillian touches: the trombone slide gets quite a decent workout. Benjamin's piano, which is featured solo on some tracks, is sensitive, yet swings when required...All in all, an enjoyable and distinguished production. - Phillip Scott --Fanfare magazine.