On this day · 118 years ago · 1908
118 Years Ago Today: Louis Jordan, the Man the Rock Hall Calls Rock and Roll's Grandfather, Was Born
Louis Jordan never billed himself as a guitar player. But the band he led, and the guitarist he hired, handed rock and roll one of its most-borrowed riffs before the genre had a name.
By Lucille, Blues desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Louis Jordan was born July 8, 1908, in Brinkley, Arkansas, and led the Tympany Five through the 1940s as the top-selling Black recording artist of the decade. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in 1987, calling him the Father of Rhythm & Blues and the Grandfather of Rock 'n' Roll. His guitarist, Carl Hogan, played the 1946 riff that Chuck Berry reused almost note for note on Johnny B. Goode.
A saxophone player, not a guitarist, but the lineage runs through him anyway
Louis Jordan was born July 8, 1908, in Brinkley, Arkansas, and by any measure of 1940s record sales, he was the biggest Black recording artist in America. He never played guitar himself. Jordan sang and played alto saxophone, fronting a tight jump blues combo called the Tympany Five, per Wikipedia's account of his career. But CYS is a guitar strings site, and Jordan earns a page here anyway, because the band he built and the guitarists he hired ended up wiring themselves directly into rock and roll's guitar DNA.
113 weeks at number one
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's own inductee page puts a number on just how dominant Jordan was: 113 combined weeks atop the R&B charts, "an unheard of accomplishment." The Hall inducted him in 1987 in the Musical Influence category, and its official description doesn't hedge on his importance, calling him "the supreme ruler of Forties R&B." The same page goes further on a single Jordan record, Saturday Night Fish Fry, calling it "an early example of rap and possibly the first rock and roll recording."
The guitarist who carried the riff forward
Jordan's own instrument was the horn, but the guitar chair in the Tympany Five is where his legacy quietly crosses into six-string history. In 1946, guitarist Carl Hogan played the intro riff on Jordan's single Ain't That Just Like a Woman (They'll Do It Every Time). Twelve years later, Chuck Berry opened Johnny B. Goode with a riff that traces back to Hogan's original almost note for note, a connection Berry acknowledged directly in interviews over the years. CYS's own profile on Hogan lays out that full chain in detail, and it exists because of the band Jordan led and staffed.
118 years on
Jordan died in 1975, decades before hip-hop existed as a genre, yet the Rock Hall's read on Saturday Night Fish Fry treats him as a direct ancestor of it as much as of rock guitar. That's a wide footprint for a bandleader who spent his career leading a horn-and-rhythm combo, not shredding leads. If you're chasing the tone that band's guitarists worked in, a clean, light-gauge nickel-wound electric set sits in the same territory Hogan's arch-top occupied.
Regular Slinky (.010–.046)
Why this one: No specific gauge is documented for Hogan's 1946 Tympany Five guitar, but a balanced light-gauge nickel-wound set is the closest modern equivalent to the clean, swinging jump blues tone his riff was built on.
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