Louis Jordan didn’t mean to be a show-stealer.

He’d never quite fit in just right, running off to play the clarinet, piano and saxophone, instead of work the farm. Joining the brass section of one the best black big bands of the 1930s, only to be mistaken for its leader.

He wasn’t trying to be the center of attention. He just played that way.

So when he was fired from aforementioned big band in 1938, it’s only natural that he would go on to do something REALLY big.

And the Tympany Five was most certainly not your average big band. Composed of only a guitar, bass, drums, piano and horns, Louis’s band was a stark departure from everything in music at the time. Because the big band sound was so popular among audiences black and white, no one dared change the style, content and respectability that white big bands had established in the genre.

Not Louis. He’d gotten where he was black and he was going to stay that way.

And he was richly rewarded for it. Within a few years of setting out on his own, Louis’s “jump music” – a fast-paced blend of jazz, swing, blues and boogie-woogie styles combined with call-and-response vocals filled with slang and controversial topics – was topping the charts. 1942’s “I’m Gonna Leave You on the Outskirts of Town” hit Billboard’s Harlem Hit Parade charts at # 2 and remained for weeks.

In fact, turning new experiments into wild successes was something that Louis Jordan and the Tympany Five began making a habit of. In 1942, Louis started creating theatrically directed film shorts called “soundies” to accompany his music. Adding a visual component to his already unexpected sound made him irresistible to just about everyone. His 1943 song “Ration Blues” reached number 1 on the R&B charts… then the country charts… and finally landed on the exclusively white pop charts at #11, making him one of the very first “crossover” artists AND one of the forefathers of the modern day music video.

The tremendous response to his music, his performances and the wild abandon with which he approached both was entirely unprecedented. Between 1943 and 1950, Jordan had a song holding the number one spot on the R&B charts for 113 weeks, a feat that earned him the nickname “King of the Jukebox.” His longest running #1 hit, “Saturday Night Fish Fry,” held the spot for 12 weeks straight, a feat that wouldn’t be accomplished again until 45 years later in 1993. That song is also considered among music academia as one example of both the original rap performance and first rock track.

But Louis wasn’t just changing the face of popular music across races and genres, he was changing the entire structure of it. The success of his five piece set meant that venues and labels could book a huge sound for a lot less money than a big band, and that money went further among a smaller group too. It was a win-win for everybody. Combined with the fact that Louis was the first to regularly use the word “rock” in his electric guitar and vocals-driven music, he’s widely credited as the true Godfather of Modern Day Rock and Roll.

Unfortunately, the complex musical arrangements that gave Louis Jordan and the Tympany Five their signature sound made their music nearly impossible to precisely duplicate, and that untouchability meant he was left out of the revolution he created. Because white musicians who had greater access to radio and TV audiences couldn’t successfully cover his songs, they covered those he’d inspired instead, leading Chubby Checker, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and so on to widespread fame.

But Louis wasn’t one to fade away. Although his last hit was in 1951, he recorded through 1972, had a significant role in 6 mainstream films and a TV show, and appeared alongside greats like Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald along the way before he died in 1975. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 as an “Early Influencer,” solidifying his legacy as a magician of sound and showmanship who stole a space for artists of all races, but especially people of color, to make something brand new.

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