Louis Thomas Jordan (July 8, 1908 - February 4, 1975) was a pioneering American musician, songwriter and bandleader who was popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "The King of the Jukebox", he was highly popular with both black and white audiences in the later years of the swing era. Jordan was one of the most successful African-American musicians of the 20th century, ranking fifth in the list of the most successful black recording artists according to Joel Whitburn's analysis of Billboard magazine's R&B chart. Though comprehensive sales figures are not available, he had at least four million-selling hits during his career.

Jordan's first band, drawn mainly from members of the Jesse Stone band, was originally a nine-piece group, but he soon scaled it down to a sextet after landing a residency at the Elks Rendezvous club, at 464 Lenox Avenue, in Harlem. The original lineup of the sextet was Jordan (saxes, vocals), Courtney Williams (trumpet), Lem Johnson (tenor sax), Clarence Johnson (piano), Charlie Drayton (bass) and Walter Martin (drums). In his first billing, as Louie Jordan's Elks Rendez-vous Band, his name was spelled Louie so people would know not to pronounce it Lewis. The new band's first recording date, for Decca Records on December 20, 1938, produced three sides on which they backed an obscure vocalist, Rodney Sturgess, and two novelty sides of their own, "Honey in the Bee Ball" and "Barnacle Bill the Sailor". These recordings were credited to the Elks Rendezvous Band, but Jordan subsequently changed the name to the Tympany Five, since Martin often used tympani in performance. (The word tympany is also an old-fashioned colloquial term meaning "swollen, inflated, puffed-up", etymologically related to timpani, or kettledrums, but historically separate.) The various lineups of the Tympany Five (which often featured two or three extra players) included Bill Jennings and Carl Hogan on guitar, the renowned pianist-arrangers Wild Bill Davis and Bill Doggett, "Shadow" Wilson and Chris Columbus on drums and Dallas Bartley on bass. Jordan played alto, tenor and baritone saxophone and sang the lead vocal on most songs. Their next recording date, in March 1939, produced five sides, including "Keep a-Knockin'" (originally recorded in the 1920s and later famously covered by Little Richard), "Sam Jones Done Snagged His Britches" and "Doug the Jitterbug". Lem Johnson subsequently left the group and was replaced by Stafford Simon. Sessions in December 1939 and January 1940 produced two more early Jordan classics, "You're My Meat" and "You Run Your Mouth and I'll Run My Business". Other musicians who passed through the band in 1940 and 1941 included the tenorist Kenneth Hollon (who recorded with Billie Holiday) and the trumpeter Freddie Webster (from Earl Hines's band), who was part of the nascent bebop scene at Minton's Playhouse and influenced Kenny Dorham and Miles Davis.

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