Book summary

Louis Jordan was born in 1908 in the strictly segregated town of Brinkley, Arkansas. In LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL, British musician and writer John Chilton describes Jordan's professional start performing on the "chitlin' circuit," backing blues legends like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, and also his stints in the bands of such storied jazz artists as Chick Webb and Louis Armstrong. In interviews with many of Jordan's musical associates and ex-wives (Jordan's domestic life was rarely straightforward), Chilton atmospherically chronicles the bandleader's early 1940s metamorphosis into a nationally successful performer. Scoring hits with hip swing and jive hits like "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens," "Caldonia Boogie," and the immortal "Choo-Choo Ch' Boogie." his popularity even extended into the South, where he and his band, the Tympany Five, played to both black and white audiences. Though Jordan's career waned with the advent of rock & roll, which he had helped create, musicians like Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, and Bill Haley all acknowledged a debt to the master performer. Entertaining and colorfully detailed, Chilton's impeccably researched biography highlights Jordan's importance as one of the prime movers of rock.