But when its time for Ms. Jordan to learn new music or work on arrangements, she is too conscious of the neighbors around her one-bedroom apartment in Chelsea, her primary residence. So she heads for her farmhouse on the outskirts of Middleburgh, N.Y., 43 miles west of Albany, where she can sing any time of the day or night without worry.
“When I come up here", she said, “I feel totally undressed musically. I feel I can try out any kind of idea I have."
On her five and a quarter acres of land atop Canady Hill, her only close neighbors have been the cows the farmer next door once kept. “I called them the bebop cows", Ms. Jordan said. “They didnt like ballads. If I sang them a slow tune, they left. If I sang bebop, they came running over."
Bebop has been the mainstay of Ms. Jordans long career.
Ms. Jordan celebrated her 80th birthday last November, and her touring schedule has not slowed, despite surgery for angioplasty a year ago and an irregular heartbeat that, as she puts it, sure doesnt swing. Her recent visits to Middleburgh have been squeezed between tour dates in Germany, Japan and Britain, along with several appearances stateside. “After I get home", she said, “I pack a few things and come up here a few days to get a rest."
There are plenty of places to wind down in and around Ms. Jordans three-bedroom, 2,000-square-foot home. In the living room, there are a soft black leather couch and an easy chair with a built-in massager, a Christmas gift from her daughter, Tracey Jordan, a marketing and promotions consultant for Abkco Music & Records. A covered front porch with cushioned wicker chairs overlooks the Helderberg Mountains.
Lilac bushes and poppies border Ms. Jordans sloping lawn. At the bottom of the yard is a small pond where Ms. Jordan likes to watch the koi, goldfish and bluegills swim and listen to the bullfrogs croak. “I tried to give them singing lessons, but they said, Do we tell you how to sing? At least you know who we are," she said.
From the pond, she can also take in the sight of her house, painted white with pine green trim. “Owning such a place is beyond the wildest imaginings of her impoverished childhood in Summerhill, a coal mining town in western Pennsylvania," she said. “I look up and say, What am I doing here? Ms. Jordan said. Im very grateful to have what I have. “
In part because, she said, she grew up in filth, she keeps her house pristine, quickly dispatching crumbs and dirty dishes after a midday meal. The aesthetic of the house is prim and country, with white beadboard knee walls around the first floor and pale flowered wallpaper in the Shaker-style kitchen.
The less-restrained nature of her career in jazz comes out in the stairwell and on the living room walls, where she displays dozens of photographs of the musicians shes gigged with and befriended, including Charles Mingus, Don Cherry and Sonny Rollins.
But pride of place goes to the saxophonist Charlie Parker. A poster of him looms over her Yamaha baby grand piano. A 78 recording of “Nows the Time", the Parker tune Ms. Jordan discovered on a jukebox in Detroit when she was 14 years old, hangs on the living room wall. “I heard three notes of that tune, and I said, Thats the kind of music Im going to dedicate my life to," she said. “Charlie Parker is the reason Im singing."
Her admiration for Bird, as Parker was known, shaped her career. After spending her teenage years in Detroit, Ms. Jordan moved to New York to be closer to him and the posse of up-and-coming bebop musicians working under his influence. She and Parker became close friends, and in 1953 she married Duke Jordan, Parkers pianist and the father of her daughter. The couple divorced 10 years later.
