Sheila Jordan (1928-2025)

She built a really beautiful life out of jazz, and her legacy helps us understand how to be better people.

Jazz singer extraordinaire Sheila Jordan died on August 11, at 96, at home. I had heard that she was struggling to pay for home health care, and her daughter had set up a GoFundMe. (Why is this country so stingy when opting out of desperate end-of-life hospital care saves so much money?) But I didn't find out that she had died until someone wrote to ask if I was related to her maternal grandparents (also named Hull)? Perhaps, but you'd have to go back 7-8 generations to locate my ancestors in Pennsylvania. Even so, Hull is a pretty common name.

The letter came with a story: "My wife used to work at the same advertising agency as her. One day — this was 30-some years ago — she came home from work and said, 'there's this secretary at work who's a jazz singer, she's supposed to be pretty good.' 'What's her name? I asked. 'Sheila Jordan.' 'Not THE Sheila Jordan?' Next day, my wife was in the restroom and Sheila walks in. 'My husband wants to know if you're THE Sheila Jordan.' And Sheila sings 'You Are My Sunshine' right there in the restroom."

Several things are credible here: Jordan supported herself as a secretary from 1951, when she moved to New York, until she was able to make it on her own as a singer (plus her teaching) — I'm unsure, but after 1987, perhaps as late as 1996 (I've seen both dates), so that could fit. Also, she was approachable like that, and could (and did) sing literally anywhere. And she never needed accompaniment, or a spotlight, to astonish. While very few people knew who she was (at least then; she started recording regularly around 1990, and winning awards after 2003, including the NEA Jazz Master in 2011, when she was 83), those few who did run across her her loved her instantly. Like me: she became my favorite jazz singer when I heard her on Roswell Rudd's Flexible Flyer (it came out in 1974; I probably heard it in 1978, and have long regarded it as perfect). I've read stories about people stopping dead in their tracks on first hearing her. I've seen that happen in my own living room. Or Francis Davis: one thing that attracted me to him as a critic was discovering that he was a Sheila Jordan fan.

She seems to have always had that effect on people, all the way back to when she was a Bird-chasing teenager in Detroit, serenading him with vocalese renditions of his songs. She seems to have charmed everyone playing jazz in Detroit, including Frank Foster, Tommy Flanagan, and Marcus Belgrave. After she moved to New York, and married his pianist, it was Bird seeking her out. She sang in clubs and jam sessions, with players like Herbie Nichols and Steve Swallow. She found tutors and patrons in Lennie Tristano, Charles Mingus, and George Russell -- not coincidentally the great workshop organizers of the 1950s. The latter is perhaps best known now (or at least this week) for having discovered her: he recorded her iconic "You Are My Sunshine," and the 1962 album Blue Note released as Portrait of Sheila. She was at once legendary and unknown, the result of seeing jazz as a life, not as a career. (As for Russell, he was both the Einstein and Zelig of jazz, appearing at nearly every critical juncture, attached to dozens of instances of pure genius.)

So she kept typing, doing the occasional side gig with a Steve Kuhn or a Carla Bley or a Roswell Rudd. In 1975, she finally led another album, on a small Japanese label. Two years later, she did another, on a Danish label, with just a bassist for accompaniment (Arild Andersen, another Russell protégé, near the start of his own brilliant career). The format suited her perfectly, allowing her complete freedom -- she can improvise on a dime, with uncanny skill at inflecting each syllable, yet she never gives the air of showing off -- while affirming that jazz for her is always a collaboration, a community project. Her few recordings in the 1980s were mostly in a quartet with Kuhn, but in 1989 she returned to bass-only, with Harvie S on Old Time Feeling, with many more to follow. (Aside from him, her most familiar bassist was Cameron Brown, although when she toured, it seemed like every bassist in Europe was dying to play with her. Her first recording was in 1960 with exceptional but little known British bassist Peter Ind.)

She started getting more attention in 1990 with her first album on Muse (Lost and Found), and she followed Barney Fields to HighNote in 1999 (with Jazz Child) -- two respected and fairly well distributed mainstream labels (the Muse catalog has languished lately, but I hear that a big round of reissues are forthcoming; Blue Note also has plans to bring Portrait of Sheila to luxury vinyl). But she never liked working in the studio. She favored live recordings, and a bunch of those have cropped up all over the world, as she tours, picks up bands, and delights audiences. Along the way, she developed a side line of running workshops, so we're beginning to see a new generation of jazz singers with her name on their resumes. Thus far none have blown me away, but she would surely disagree. The gallery she keeps of her students calls out for further investigation.

The only time I ever saw Jordan was at one of her workshops, back in the mid-1990s. I was struck by the respect and enthusiasm she brought to the proceedings, the utter lack of pretentiousness, but also by the huge gap between their levels. Despite very little real performance, I came away awestruck, as is so often the case with her records or videos. But I was every bit as enchanted by her fundamental humanity. She came from a hard place — "hell" as she told Russell — but nothing seems to have gotten (or at least kept) her down. She says jazz saved her life, but it's really her understanding of, and participation in, jazz: of the music, of the community, of the culture, of the world. She built a really beautiful life out of jazz, and her legacy is how she helps us understand that.

Despite the financial troubles, reports of her death are idyllic: back in her own long-time apartment, surrounded by her daughter and friends, playing music she loved, a peaceful end to a long and very fruitful life. She may not be as famous as she deserves to be, but by the time I found out, the internet was flooded with well wishers, including a lovely obituary in the New York Times, and more in NPR, Detroit News, ArtsFuse, DownBeat, People, Jazzwise, Rolling Stone (although their subtitle about how "she paved the way for the likes of Norah Jones and Diana Krall" was nonsense), and by Nate Chinen.

Every death comes with regrets. That is part of how we process such irrevocable news, and come to grips without own shortcomings. I wish now that I had picked up Ellen Johnson's biography of Jordan, Jazz Child: A Portrait of Sheila Jordan, and not just for the fact check -- not that I lacked for material: in addition to the obituaries and reminiscences above, see Johnson's pre-death Sheila Jordan's life of jazz, legacy of love, and long and detailed interviews by Marc Myers and Terry Gross, and in 20 Questions. I'm less bothered by not having seen or met her, as I almost never see or meet anyone. Nor am I bothered by her not gaining the recognition she deserved. I expect that will come. (I've complained to DownBeat for years about them leaving her off their Hall of Fame ballot — I've also complained, and sometimes written in the names of Rudd and Russell. But I also recall complaining about them leaving Jackie McLean off the ballot. Next year they included him, and he won -- all he had to do in the meantime was die. But their lapses really just discredit them, and their course corrections are just an attempt to get back on the right side of history. When Ellington lost a chance to win a Pulitzer, he suggested that "fate doesn't want me to be famous too young." He did win one posthumously.)

But her death does more than just sadden us. It closes off all those alternate scenarios one could have imagined. My biggest regret was that Jordan never had a producer who could just pitch arbitrary songs to her and let the tape run, like Norman Granz with Ella Fitzgerald, or Rick Rubin with Johnny Cash. It would have been as much fun at pitching batting practice to Ted Williams. Russell got a start like that with "You Are My Sunshine," but he was soon off to other projects, like bringing jazz to Scandinavia, arranging his electronic sonatas, and pioneering jazz education as we know it today. We have many hints of what she could have done. Maybe her students will take them as inspiration for building on her legacy? Like how she added a whole new dimension to Charlie Parker's legacy. I doubt any will match her.