It’s not just the creation of the small-scale jump band or the development of jazz nuance married to a shuffle beat, not even the unprecedented use of electric guitar, blues organ, or filmed performances to promote songs (all by 1950) that distinguishes the legacy of Louis Jordan.

What really made Louis Jordan an innovator was the ability to transfer the essence of black American culture from rural minstrel shows and neighborhood . barbershops into a mainstream aesthetic that welcomed both white and black audiences without losing the bedrock inspiration of that subculture’s hip mentality.

How successful was he? Between 1942 and 1951, Jordan scored an incredible 57 charted hits while recording for Decca. The treasure trove of enduring tunes he left us with have become so familiar we are frequently tempted to forget their source, songs like “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie,” “Caldonia,” “I’m Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town,” Let the Good Times Roll, ” “Run Joe,” “Blue Light Boogie,” and “Saturday Night Fish Fry.”

Unfortunately,once the hits ran out in the early 1950s, Decca dropped him like a hot potato, and he never knew that kind of success again. H~ continued to record through the 1950s, most notably for the Harlem-based Aladdin label (reissued on Blue Note) and under the inspiration of a young Quincy Jones for Mercury (reissued by the Verve label), but up until his death from a heart attack in 1975, he was recycling advancements he’d made earlier that now sounded old-fashioned.

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Jordan seldom gets his due as a revolutionary innovator, in part because his persona, like another cultural hero of the time, Jackie Robinson, masked the enormity of his accomplishment. The cornerstone of his legacy remains his work for Decca and this two-CD set, which belongs in every record collection, presents an overview that is both inclusive and concise of Jordan’s groundbreaking and thoroughly entertaining genius.