THE MOST celebrated pianists of the modern jazz revolution of the 1940s were Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, but their contemporary Duke Jordan was almost as significant, because of his work with Charlie Parker from 1947-48.
Jordan was also a prolific composer, and in addition to writing the standards Jordu (after the first syllables of his name) and No Problem, he wrote a wide range of material, including much of the score to Roger Vadim’s movie Les Liaisons Dangereuses (under the nom de plume Jacques Marray).
Irving Sidney Jordan began classical piano as a child, but launched his jazz career at 17 when he played at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. In the early 1940s he worked with the Savoy Sultans, the resident band at Harlem’s most famous ballroom.
In April 1947 — already known to the jazz world as “Duke ” — he was invited to join Charlie Parker’s new quintet at the Three Deuces club in New York, at the same time as a young unknown trumpeter called Miles Davis. The band quickly established itself as one of Parker’s best-ever groups, and recordings such as Embraceable You, Scrapple from the Apple and Crazeology not only became landmarks in modern jazz, but display Jordan’s talent for elegant understated introductions and for first-rate support to the soloists.
He and Davis worked together to develop the harmonic basis of their music, to ensure that the most apposite chords were used to accompany Parker’s inventive playing.
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Jordan left the band at about the same time as Davis in late 1948. In 1949 he began working with Stan Getz, whom he played for on and off until the early 1950s, although he felt that in this quartet his talents were underappreciated and that he was not given sufficient solo space.
This was rectified in the late 1950s as he began recording under his own name for the Savoy label, notably in a quartet with the baritone saxophonist Cecil Payne. The two of them toured Europe in a play called The Connection, mixing live jazz with a plot about drug addiction — like so many of Parker’s circle, Jordan had become dependent on heroin. He left music in 1967, and resumed playing in 1972 only after weaning himself off the drug.
In 1978 he moved to Denmark and became one of the senior figures among expatriate American jazz players in Europe. He recorded with the cream of American visitors, including the bassist Sam Jones and the drummers Ed Thigpen, Roy Haynes, Philly Joe Jones and Billy Hart, as well as such prominent Europeans as the bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (obituary, April 22, 2005). These 20 or so discs are remarkable for the consistent quality of his writing.
His playing career was ended by a series of strokes, and he lived quietly in the Copenhagen suburb of Valby.
In the early 1950s, he was briefly married to the singer Sheila Jordan, who survives him, as does their daughter.
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Duke Jordan, jazz pianist and composer, was born on April 1, 1922. He died on August 8, 2006, aged 84.