NOW, A JAZZ MOMENT… MUSIC: I Got Rhythm (Sheila Jordan)                         CD: I’ve Grown Accustomed to the Bass

HighNote Records 2007

NEA JAZZ MASTER SHEILA JORDAN IS ONE OF THE MOST DISTINCTIVE SINGERS IN JAZZ.  SHE SPENDS MUCH OF HER TIME IN UPSTATE NEW YORK, WHERE SHE’S ATTRACTED A VERY UNEXPECTED AUDIENCE. Sheila Jordan:  Thanks to jazz music, I have a house upstate, a wonderful little house.  And there are a lot of cows up there!  So I love to go out walking and improvise, or learning lines.  So I remember one day I was walking and I was just singing lines, you know just to get ideas into my head (demos).  All of a sudden, all these cows came storming over the hill!  I said, oh my god, are they kidding?!  The LADY cows -- the bulls, they just sort of like, they weren’t that interested.  But the lady cows, oh my god, there they were with their tails going.  And I sang and they never left, they just looked at me.  The minute I stopped singing bebop, and did a ballad, they left.  I was just trying to see, would they LIKE a ballad?  And they split!  (laughs) MUSIC: post for punctuation THIS JAZZ MOMENT WITH VOCALIST SHEILA JORDAN WAS CREATED BY THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS.