Customer Reviews

From Barrelhouse to Broadway: The Musical Odyssey of Joe Jordan

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I own several PRO albums. They are a class act in every way. But this album does not hold up to the high standard of repertoire as the other albums. All the material (except one) is a single composer. There are 2 interviews with Joe Jordan. If you're not a historian of American music you likely won't find this album to be as musically engaging as the other PRO offerings. Along a similar theme is the Clef Club album but with a wide selection of composers. Buy that one before you buy this one. Just gotta say that PRO is a musical treasure and their music has provided immense enjoyment to me, my family and friends. I will continue collecting PRO albums until I have them all.

I guess we'll never really know exactly how much and what kind of groove this music "should" have. Early recorded information (piano rolls, acoustic discs) creates an ambiguous impression. It seems really obvious that it shouldn't "swing" like Jazz. But it also seems obvious that its "Afro-American-ness" is situated somewhere within its rhythmic and gestural language. Finding out exactly where - there's the challenge. And Paragon Ragtime Orchestra doesn't exactly rise to it. Beautifully played - but stiff. Not the stiffest I've heard, but stiff enough. The CD gives us a real picture of this pioneer of that region where Ragtime met Show Business. He's definitely not one of the true greats, but if you're interested in the genre you should hear this. I think it's always good to have a clearer picture of what a musical milieu was really like. Otherwise one might imagine a musical world where there was no transition between Joplin and Euday L. Bowman. Joe Jordan was somewhere in the middle. My favorite track is "Dat's Ma Honey Sho's Yo' Born". To call it "dated" would be an understatement. But in the middle of its forced bonhomie, there is something truly touching. Jordan seems to have lived a basically happy and productive life, always somewhat in the margins. This CD allows us to live in that lost world, if only in a very refracted way. I would suggest, however, that if you the listener want a clearer picture of what this music really sounded like in its day, you must pick up all those James Reese Europe, Bert Williams and Wilbur Sweatman reissues that we are fortunate to now have out. They're not exactly Ragtime, but you can hear those little elements of pre-Jazz wildness that were in the performance style of the time. These performances here are perhaps, to put it nicely, a little too textually based.