Tuesday, July 24, 2012

La Historia de Esteban Jordan (Entry 5) - Jazz Covers

These are two of my all time favorite Jordan videos. Similar to what I mentioned in a previous Caballero post, you're also not going to find many professionally shot videos on Jordan. But I'm really glad we have these, to capture why Jordan was a big influence and inspiration to so many guys like Guzman, Caballero, Yanez, and Castillo. Hermes filmed this live Jordan performance, and it seemed to have aired on a TV show and was released on DVD (limited? to a select few?). Where did this TV show air (which includes an interview with Jordan, Castillo, and Jordan's sons) and where did this DVD get sold? I have no idea but I really would love to know. Anyways, after Jordan passed away, these videos were uploaded by Gilbert Reyes, a Harlingen native that works with Hohner so I should probably contact him.

Jordan considered himself a jazz artist. In some interviews he did during the course of his career, he expressed frustration at not doing as much jazz as he would like. He was able to do jazz, blues, and totally experimental accordion licks during his conjunto music. He was a total maestro at what he accomplished as a musician.  Here he is doing two jazz standards on the button diatonic accordion - "Summertime" and George Benson's "Clockwise". Really fantastic videos that captured Jordan's greatness. Also, the drummer to the video is Juanito Castillo, Jordan's accordion protege, a kid who can go on to become one of the best accordionists ever. The third video here is a TV recording of this same event.

1 comment:

  1. Nice write ups, gracias for sharing. Que viva la musica

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