BRATTLEBORO-The legendary vocalist Sheila Jordan passed away on Monday, Aug. 11 at 3:50 p.m. at the age of 96.
For those of you who aren't familiar with Sheila Jordan, I strongly suggest that you listen to her recordings and let her singing draw you into her world.
Her music embraced poetry, and she sang like a storyteller who colored their tales with the nuance of song. Her melodies conformed at first to the composer's melody, but she characteristically used melisma to slide between notes and perfectly nail the note she was aiming for.
Sheila possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the Great American Songbook - her repertoire was immense, and she loved to nurture her thousands of students through their own selections of tunes from that canon.
She sang only songs that she could relate to wholeheartedly, choosing compositions with lyrics and feels that were representative of her own experiences.
In every performance she embraced risk, improvising like a horn player, embracing lesser-known composers, and composing her own melodies and lyrics. Her time was impeccable, and she could "hang" with any drummer at any tempo.
* * *
Sheila's choice of repertoire drew on the vast experiences of her multifaceted life.
She was good friends with Charlie (Bird) Parker, who called her "the girl with million-dollar ears." She married Parker's pianist, Duke Jordan, and raised their daughter, Tracey. She once told me that she married Duke because she wanted to be closer to Bird.
The world Sheila grew up in was colored by serious poverty, racism, and familial alcoholism. She was born in Detroit to a mother who was only 21 years old, who was unable to handle the responsibilities of raising a young daughter. So she was sent to live with her grandparents in the coal mining culture of Pennsylvania's Allegheny Mountains.
As a young teen, Sheila moved back to Detroit, where she joined a singing trio that played Charlie Parker tunes as the basis of their repertoire. To make a long story short, she ended up in New York, raising young Tracey and playing occasional gigs while working as a secretary.
Although she had been "discovered" and recorded her debut on Blue Note Records in 1962, Sheila continued to work for an additional 25 years at her day job until the age of 58, when she was finally able to commit fully to the music.
* * *
In 1997, when Elsa Borrero and I came in as directors of the Vermont Jazz Center, we asked Sheila to add a vocal program to the annual Summer Jazz Workshop.
She was happy to join us, and the vocal program has remained a major attraction to this day. It grew so much that Sheila invited her best friend, Jay Clayton, as a partner.
Sheila continued to teach through last year's workshop when, at the age of 95, she empowered 20 students from around the world with her talent, commitment, and inspirational stories.
She accumulated hundreds of awards during her lifetime, the most significant being her recognition by the National Endowment of the Arts as a jazz master. Her piano and the walls of her upstate New York home were crammed with recognitions of appreciation and photos of her in concert with jazz royalty.
Despite her prestige as one of the most highly appreciated jazz vocalists in the world, Sheila's history of being subjected to poverty and racism - she was of indigenous background and had a child with a Black man in the 1950s - led her to be one of the most empathic individuals we have ever met.
She eschewed the paradigm that a singer deserved to be treated as a spoiled diva. She related with real people directly and challenged us all to recognize and value others for their capacity to love rather than for their accumulated prestige or wealth. She was a truly loving soul.
* * *
Since her passing, I've been looking through the hundreds of Sheila photos. The one constant, in almost all of them, is her beaming, encouraging, and authentic smile.
When Elsa and I took an extended sabbatical to Colombia, Sheila sang us a beautiful ballad (by Frankie Laine and Carl Fischer) as a departing gift. Here is a verse from that song. May we remember Sheila and her shining example for the rest of our days:
No tears, no fears / Remember there's always tomorrow / So what if we have to part / We'll be together again.
Eugene Uman is director of the Vermont Jazz Center. To learn more about Sheila Jordan's life and work, visit sheilajordanjazz.net.
This Arts column was submitted to The Commons.