Clifford Jordan

Born September 2, 1931, Clifford Jordan first started playing jazz at Chicago's legendary Du Sable High School, along with his schoolmates Johnny Griffin, John Gilmore, Richard Davis and John Jenkins. In 1947, Gene Ammons gave the sixteen-year-old Clifford his first jazz engagement. He spent ten years on the streets, listening to and jamming with the best of the city's musicians—Wilbur Ware, Chris Anderson, Johnny Griffin—and the occasional out-of-towner passing through, such as Sonny Stitt, Art Blakey, and Max Roach.

In the late '50s, Clifford was a bright light in New York, playing and recording regularly with the greats: Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Horace Silver and Max Roach. By 1960, he had appeared on eleven records—primarily Blue Note, Prestige and Riverside—and was leader on five. His discography numbers more than 100 albums, recorded with a wide cross-section of the best musicians in jazz.

Though known mainly as a straight-ahead, blues and ballad player, Clifford has never rejected the "outside" innovators. Besides Dolphy and Mingus, he played with Woody Shaw and Don Cherry in the early '60s, and Pharaoh Saunders, Charles Brackeen, Ed Blackwell and Jack DeJohnette in the late '60s and extended further out to Andrew Hill and Cecil Taylor. Clifford stretched in other areas too, writing band arrangements, starting his own successful big band in 1990, and embarking on new classical compositions, including a string quartet.

Clifford Jordan died on March 27, 1993.

[Double LP] Clifford Jordan Quartet: Live At Ethel's

$48.00

Clifford Jordan

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