Music
Sheila Jordan
1928–2025 · jazz singer, songwriter, educator
Detroit-born bebop singer who as a teenager sang in the city's jazz clubs and caught Charlie Parker's ear before moving to New York in 1951.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
New York City, New York
aged 96- Birth name
- Sheila Jeanette Dawson
- Detroit years
- 1928–1930s, 1942–1951
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Sheila Jordan was born Sheila Dawson in Detroit and spent much of her childhood with her grandparents in a Pennsylvania coal-mining town. By 1942 she was back in Detroit with her mother, and as a teenager she was already working the city's jazz scene as a club singer and pianist. With Skeeter Spight and Leroi Mitchell she formed the vocal trio Skeeter, Mitch and Jean, which set bebop solos to lyrics; the three met Charlie Parker at his Detroit performances, and he invited them to sing. Parker would later introduce her as “the lady with the million dollar ears”. In 1951 she moved to New York, studied with Lennie Tristano and Charles Mingus, and married Parker's pianist Duke Jordan. Her Blue Note album Portrait of Sheila (1963) made her name, and she went on to pioneer duets with bass alone and to teach jazz singing for decades.
Highlights
- Portrait of Sheila on Blue Note (1963)
- Pioneered voice-and-bass duo performances
- Charlie Parker called her “the lady with the million dollar ears”
- NEA Jazz Master (2012)