Topic: Charley Jordan

[uncle bud]

JohnM's vocal thread mentions Charley Jordan's Hunkie Tunkie Blues, a tune I've worked on to a small degree, and it got me dragging out my Document Vol 1 of Charley. I love his singing and those first solo Chicago sessions from 1930 have some great material: Hunkie Tunkie, Keep It Clean, Gasoline Blues, Stack O' Dollars, Big Four Blues (which JohnM does a lesson of here on Weenie Campbell), Spoonful. The material is a little repetitive, played usually out of E position and capoed up somewhere, but it's great. Once he starts playing with Peetie Wheatstraw on piano, however, I find it becomes quite repetitive, however good some of the tracks may be. I'm curious whether anyone has Document vols 2 and 3 and if they're as repetitive, are they mostly duets with Peetie etc. He's one of my faves of the St Louis crowd but I don't know if I need three CDs of the stuff if it's all the same (cf. Lonnie Johnson).

[Johnm]

Hi Uncle Bud,
I wish I had bought the three Charley Jordan Document CDs in stages.  I purchased all three at Port Townsend 2 or 3 years ago.  Only the first volume has Charley doing solo numbers, which I agree are by far the most interesting portion of his recorded work.  It seems really odd that someone who was as good a guitar player as Charley never recorded solo numbers again after his first time in the studio.  The piano/guitar duets he played on are fine, but they are repetitious and don't have any of the fireworks of some of his solo numbers.
All best,
Johnm

[uncle bud]

Thanks John. Sounds like there are other things to buy before the rest of the Charley Jordan titles. Too bad. Basically, all of those solo numbers are great. Forgot to mention Dollar Bill Blues. What a great tune!

[Cooljack]

I just saw this CD in the Document offer the other week titled "Charley Jordan Vol. 1" with a picture of a guy with a guitar on the front so I thought I'd take a musical gamble and get it seeing as it was cheap, anyway before that moment I had never heard of Charley Jordan and Im listening to it now and finding that I really really like it. Also had some very interesting notes in the sleeve as to his life in the prohbition era.

Just wandering if anyone else has listened to any of his music and what there opinions on it are? Also if anyone had any other blues musicians they had discovered completely out of the "blue" . 

[CF]

Charley's fantastic in my opinion. I have about 10-15 of his tunes & I think they're all good. His most popular tune being 'Keep It Clean No.2' which, coincidentally, I learned last night! He tends to reuse a lot of the same ideas & sounds like they originate out of a usually capoed E position. I will be looking for his complete work in the future.
Question: anyone know if he's one of the Two Charlies?

[banjochris]

Charley Jordan is amazing, mostly. Some of the piano-guitar duets with Peetie Wheatstraw aren't that fabulous, but some of them are. All three volumes are worth getting -- Vol. 1 for the great solo stuff, Vol. 2 for the amazing duets with Hi Henry Brown and Vol. 3 for the Two Charlies material.

And although I love the Two Charlies material and it's included on Charlie Jordan Vol. 3, I think the consensus based on style and geography and other factors is that the Charlie Jordan in the Two Charlies is a different Charlie Jordan.
Chris

[dj]

Hey, Cooljack

I'm a Charley Jordan fan, too, though  have to say I prefer his music when he's not being accompanied by a pianist, as I feel that the piano (or is it just Peetie Wheatstraw himself?) sucks a bit of the sprightliness out of Jordan's playing.  Charley got a lot of mileage out of playing the guitar in E position.  He had a really lively right thumb, and he'd come up with stuff, like the chords under the first line of the verse in "Hunkie Tunkie", that manages to sound amazingly fresh to me even after hearing it for 35 years.

"Keep It Clean" - now there's a song you get the feeling went on for a lot longer than three minutes when Jordan performed it live. 

If you haven't done so already, you can click the Tags tab at the top of the page, click on St Louis, and under the Blues of St Louis topic there's a good discussion of the whole St Louis scene that Jordan was a part of. 

[mississippijohnhurt1928]

I just saw this CD in the Document offer the other week titled "Charley Jordan Vol. 1" with a picture of a guy with a guitar on the front so I thought I'd take a musical gamble and get it seeing as it was cheap, anyway before that moment I had never heard of Charley Jordan and Im listening to it now and finding that I really really like it. Also had some very interesting notes in the sleeve as to his life in the prohbition era.

Just wandering if anyone else has listened to any of his music and what there opinions on it are? Also if anyone had any other blues musicians they had discovered completely out of the "blue" . 

I love Charlie Jordan's music, he's one of my favorite pre-war bluesmen.