Not only did Jordan record extensively for Vocalion starting in 1930 -- both his own sides and as an accompanist to Peetie Wheatstraw -- but he and Big Joe Williams also ran what has been variously described as a rehearsal studio or a club inside a residential building in St. Louis that became a mecca for visiting bluesmen preparing to record in the city; by some accounts, he was to St. Louis‘ blues scene what Tampa Red became in Chicago in the second half of the '30s and the early '40s. With that perch as a vantage point, Jordan was also perfectly positioned to serve as a talent scout for both Vocalion and Decca in the '30s; and that position, coupled with his own prodigious guitar skills, ended up giving him the pick of talent to work with on his own sides, though he was never as well known as a lot of the people with whom he played. In addition to his recordings with Wheatstraw, which are probably the way that most blues listeners know him best, Jordan played with Big Joe Williams, Memphis Minnie, Roosevelt Sykes, and Casey Bill Weldon, among many others. Of his own recorded work, the song that was most popular in his time -- and continues to attract the most attention today -- is his suggestive Keep It Clean, for which he recorded at least one major follow-up record; it's of a piece with such risqué works as It's Tight Like That by Tampa Red, The Signifying Monkey by Willie Dixon, and Reelin' and Rockin' by Chuck Berry. He lived until 1954, probably age 64, and some accounts say he succumbed to pneumonia while others say he died by violence on November 15 of that year. Jordan's memory lingered in obscurity, neglected by the successors to the record labels for which he recorded, until the '90s when Austria's Document Records assembled a three-volume CD series devoted to his complete recorded output. His reputation grew exponentially as a result of those discs, and since then, his work has also been compiled by the Classic Blues label. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi