Trailblazing jazz singer dies while ‘listening to the music she loved’

Sheila Jordan, a prolific jazz singer who helped pioneer a bebop and scat singing style, has died. She was 96.

Jordan’s death was announced by her daughter, Tracey, in an Instagram post on Monday, Aug. 11.

“Dear Jazz Family & Friends, My dearest mum Sheila Jordan passed away peacefully this afternoon, Monday, August 11 on at 3:50 pm. Her friend Joan Belgrave was playing her a bebop tune called Bill for Bennie, by her late husband Marcus Belgrave. My mom fell asleep listening to the music she loved and helped define,” she wrote alongside a photo of her holding her mother’s hand.

“Thank you for your support and generosity, the money raised on her GoFundMe page will be used to pay off medical debt and secure a plot for her at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Jazz Corner,“ she wrote. ”A memorial service will be planned in the future at Saint Peter’s Church in New York City. Love, Tracey.”

Jordan was born in Detroit on Nov. 18, 1928 but was raised by her grandparents in Pennsylvania, according to PEOPLE. She moved to New York in the 1950s, married Duke Jordan in 1952, studied with Lennie Tristano and worked in jazz clubs, her AllMusic biography states.

Despite having “a relatively small voice,” Jordan “has done the maximum with her instrument” and is considered “one of the most consistently creative of all jazz singers,” Scott Yanow wrote for AllMusic.

“She is one of the few vocalists who can improvise logical lyrics (which often rhyme), she is a superb scat singer, and is also an emotional interpreter of ballads,” Yanow wrote.

Jordan’s contributions to the genre are said to have paved the way for the likes of Norah Jones and Diana Krall.

Jordan was featured on George Russell’s 1962 rendition of “You Are My Sunshine” for his album, “The Outer View (Riverside).” The next year, Jordan released her debut album, “Portrait of Sheila,” becoming one of the few singers to lead her own project through Blue Note Records.

However, a decade would pass before Jordan would return to music. She worked with Carla Bley, Roswell Rudd and co-led a group with Steve Kuhnin the late ’70s. By the ’80s, Jordan was recording as a leader for dozens of projects, including her final album, “Portrait Now,” which came out in February.

Among Jordan’s accolades include being the 2012 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts, the nation’s highest honor in jazz.

“A superb scat singer, Jordan could just as easily reach the emotional depths of a ballad,” the NEA wrote in a press release announcing the singer’s death. “Whether singing well-known standards or original material, she made it all sound like no one else.”

Outside of music, Jordan had taught at the City College of New York and was a faculty member for Jazz in July at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the Vermont Jazz Center in Brattleboro, Vermont, according to the NEA. She conducted workshops internationally as well.

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