HELENA-WEST HELENA – Delta Cultural Center is celebrating the centennial of Delta native son Louis Jordan’s birth in 2008 with “Jazzin’, Jammin’ & Jivin’: The History of Jazz on Film,” an exhibition of rare movie posters from the Separate Cinema Archive, on display at the DCC Visitors Center on historic Cherry Street through August 1. Jordan, born July 8, 1908, in Brinkley, was one of Arkansas’s brightest musical stars, ruling the rhythm and blues charts of the World War II era with hits like “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie,” “Let the Good Times Roll,” “Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens,” “Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t (My Baby),” Beans and Cornbread,” and “Saturday Night Fish Fry.” The infectious and readily identifiable shuffle rhythm sound of Jordan and his small combo, the Tympany Five, is now widely regarded as a principle ingredient of what would become known as rock and roll.

Ironically, Jordan was among those veteran musicians whose careers were undermined with the coming of the Rock Era. Though he continued to be a draw at nightclubs and other venues in the U.S. and abroad, Jordan never returned to the charts after the early 1950s. He died on February 4, 1975, at Los Angeles.

Today, songs Jordan made famous are found on the soundtracks of many contemporary movies, in advertising campaigns, and are at the core of the hit musical revue “Five Guys Named Moe.” Numerous performers including B.B. King, James Brown, Chuck Berry, Bill Haley, and Ray Charles have acknowledged their debt to the charismatic entertainer and his music. Jordan was posthumously welcomed as a pioneer into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987; in 1999, the hall focused its American Music Master program on his life and music. Jordan was inducted into the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame in 1998 and into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2005.

In addition to numerous events slated around the state in recognition of the centennial of his birth, the famed bandleader of the 1940s Swing Era will also be pictured on a U.S. Postal Service stamp in 2008. Jordan’s landmark “Caldonia” is part of a new series of stamps to be released in July highlighting vintage black cinema. The “Caldonia” poster reproduced on the stamp is among those exhibited in the “Jazzin’ Jammin’ & Jivin’” exhibit at the DCC. In connection with the exhibition, the DCC will host a showing of “Caldonia” and various Jordan “soundies” – early music videos – on Friday, July 11, featuring commentary by music writer and Jordan authority Stephen Koch of Little Rock, host of the “Arkansongs” radio program. A reception open to the public begins at 6 p.m. at the DCC Visitors Center; the program begins at 6:30 p.m.

Koch, a native of Stuttgart, is the founder and host of Jordan birthday events held in central Arkansas for the past decade.

“We’d been aware of the approaching Louis Jordan centennial for some time, and we’d been keeping our eyes open for something unique we could bring to the celebration,” says Katie Harrington, DCC director. “When we found out that his ‘Caldonia’ was among those films which would be recognized in a new series of stamps from the U.S. Postal Service, we quickly turned to Separate Cinema Archives to determine if there was something special that could involve that poster image – that’s when ‘Jazzin’, Jammin’ & Jivin’’ became an integral part of our focus.”

The exhibit features more than 40 vintage posters from the Separate Cinema Archive collection, tracing the long journey of jazz from its Southern roots in New Orleans, following along to major stops in Memphis, Kansas City, and Chicago, and finally to New York where it continues to grow and evolve. In addition to Jordan, other jazz greats who figure in “Jazzin, Jammin’ & Jivin’” include W.C. Handy, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Josephine Baker, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, and Thelonious Monk.

Jordan’s starring role in a series of black cast movies was one extension of the popularity of his records and concerts in the 1940s. In addition to special performances for the troops and numerous appearances on Armed Forces Radio Service, Jordan was also among those select artists asked to make “V-discs,” special recordings sent to wartime GIs overseas. In addition to the highly successful “Caldonia” short and his cameos in “Follow the Boys” (1944) and “Swing Parade of 1946,” Jordan starred in three full-length features for Astor Pictures: “Beware!” (1946), “Reet Petite & Gone” (1947), and “Look Out Sister” (1948).

In addition, the DCC exhibit includes pieces of Louis Jordan memorabilia from the museum’s own archives, as well as others on loan from the Old State House Museum. Making their exhibition debut will be three newly-acquired artifacts in the DCC collection – a 1948 movie poster and two lobby cards for Jordan’s “Look Out Sister,” in which the bandleader takes on the persona of a cowboy – Two-Gun Jordan and his Jivin’ Cowhands – for an extended dream sequence.

“This is the wildest and most rocking of all the Louis Jordan films,” author/musician Marshall Crenshaw writes in his book, “Hollywood Rock: A Guide to Rock ‘n’ Roll in the Movies.”

“As we were putting together our exhibit,” Harrington says of the DCC’s acquisition of the Jordan poster through Separate Cinema, “we realized we had an opportunity to acquire one of these wonderful posters that spoke directly to the history of one of the Delta’s great performers, as well as the black movie house experience that impacted on Helena, as well as other Delta communities.” Separate Cinema donated the vintage lobby cards to the DCC.

Other Jordan-related events are also slated around Arkansas.

– A new play, “Jump! The Louis Jordan Story,” will be staged at Wildwood Park for the Performing Arts in Little Rock on July 19-20. It is directed by Cliff Fannin Baker and is written by Koch.

– A documentary film, “Is You Is: The Louis Jordan Story,” is also in production and is slated to premiere sometime during the centennial year. Clark Documentary Productions, in partnership with the University of Central Arkansas, began pre-production on “Is You Is” in 2007, utilizing a $5,000 grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council. AHC awarded a $25,000 grant in November 2007 to fund the documentary’s production phase. DCC Assistant Director Terry Buckalew serves as a humanities scholar for the film.

– A Jordan film retrospective at Batesville and Little Rock was part of the 2008 Ozarks Film Fest held earlier this spring. Brinkley’s annual free Choo Choo Ch’Boogie Delta Music Festival was held in Jordan’s honor on May 17 at Central Delta Depot Museum.

Notably, it was a “Caldonia” movie poster featuring Jordan that began the story of Separate Cinema Archive more than three decades ago. John Kisch, archive founder and director, had been given the jazz movie poster by a friend and, as other friends commented on its uniqueness, he began in the early 1970s to research the history of black cinema and take a broad interest in the memorabilia of the films.

Kisch, a New York-based photographer, began haunting antique shops, comics stores, and auction houses while traveling on assignments; he also began placing want ads in various publications, seeking items of interest. Today, Kish’s persistence has paid off with the largest archive African-American film memorabilia in the world, housing more than 25,000 posters, lobby cards, and photos from more than 30 countries.

In 1992, Farrar Straus & Giroux published “Separate Cinema: 50 Years of Black Cast Posters” by Kisch and Edward C. Mapp, with an introduction by Donald Bogle and a preface by director Spike Lee.

Separate Cinema grew from one man’s interest into an institution which offers travel-ready exhibits on a number of black cinema themes to museums, galleries, libraries, and festivals around the globe, including the Smithsonian, the British Film Institute, the Apollo Theater, and the National Civil Rights Museum.

A number of educators, film historians, authors, actors, and others also aid Separate Cinema in its educational mission.

Mark Cantor, a film archivist and historian who is part of the Separate Cinema team, points out in his introductory exhibit notes that an exhibit like “Jazzin’, Jammin’, & Jivin’” can offer a link to an era and evidence of commercial art that is otherwise shrouded in the mysteries of time.

“Distribution of the motion pictures containing jazz content ranged from films produced by the major studios to independent productions. In the latter case, feature films were often carried from town to town by the producer, exhibited nationwide via only one or two prints of the film,” Cantor notes. “As a result, the films themselves have often become lost over time – or at least await rediscovery – and in these cases the paper promotional materials are the only evidence we have of their production and release.”

Gallery hours at the DCC Visitors Center at 141 Cherry Street and the nearby DCC Depot at 95 Missouri Street are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. “King Biscuit Time,” the nation’s longest-running blues radio program, is hosted each weekday at the DCC Visitor’s Center by “Sunshine” Sonny Payne, from 12:15 to 12:45 p.m. “Delta Sounds,” hosted by DCC Assistant Director Terry Buckalew and Payne, is broadcast each Friday from 1 to 1:30 p.m.

For more information, interested persons can call the Delta Cultural Center at (870)-338-4350 or toll free at (800)-358-0972 or visit the DCC online at www.deltaculturalcenter.com.

The Delta Cultural Center shares the vision of all seven agencies of the Department of Arkansas Heritage – to preserve and promote Arkansas heritage as a source of pride. Other agencies include the Historic Arkansas Museum, the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, the Old State House Museum, the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, the Arkansas Arts Council, and the Natural Heritage Commission.

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