Sheila Jordan
‘Comes Love: The Lost 1960 Session’ (Capri Records)
‘Live at Mezzrow’ (Cellar 20)

In 1960, the jazz singer Sheila Jordan enjoyed a long run of Monday nights at The Page Three, a bar in New York City’s West Village. In 2021, as the pandemic lockdown began to unlock, she performed at Mezzrow, a diminutive but charming club also in the West Village. The results of both performances have just been released commercially, and they have a great deal to tell us.  

The walk from the site of the former Page Three to the current Mezzrow takes less time than most of the tracks on “Live at Mezzrow.” Although it took Sheila Jordan more than 60 years to travel that short distance, it has been worth every second.

Both of these sets defy pre-set expectations. The 1960 material does not give us a young singer who sounds shallow or bereft of palpable experience. Likewise, the 2021 recording does not sound like a 92-year-old woman at the finish line of her career, struggling to hit the notes or stay in sync with the band. Far from it: In 1960, Ms. Jordan already sings with considerable wisdom, nuance, and profundity; in 2021, her voice sounds as perky and spirited as it ever did, and she’s even more entertaining.

“Comes Love” could have also been called “The Forgotten Session.”  It was recorded in a Midtown Manhattan studio, but it captured the same material and musicians she was then using weekly in the Village. Once finished, Ms. Jordan seems to have never thought of the project again, especially after she made her first-released album, “Portrait of Sheila,” for Blue Note Records two years later.  

The material surfaced in a box of one-of-a-kind acetates exhumed by a pair of jazz record dealers in Albuquerque. Ms. Jordan has no memory of the date, and thus was unable to identify the rhythm section; everyone’s best guess regarding the pianist seems to be Dave Frishberg, who, unfortunately, died last November, before anyone could ask him about it.

Ms. Jordan is as pure a jazz singer as there is, and to her the name of the one true God is Charlie Parker. She prides herself on such pure jazz virtues as scatting and swinging, and there’s no shortage of either here. 

What is surprising is that there are a lot of deep narrative songs, many from musical theater. James Shelton’s “I’m The Girl” is an upscale torch song, originally from the 1950 revue “Dance Me a Song” and famously from the repertoire of cabaret singer Sylvia Syms; in tone and narrative, it sounds like an alternate version of Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman.” 

Inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Ballad of the Sad Young Men” is a complicated story-song, performed very movingly by Ms. Jordan, from a Broadway musical (“The Nervous Set”) about the so-called Beat Generation. “When the World Was Young,” with its complicated set of verses and choruses and minor-major harmonic trajectory, is another big ask for a young performer.  

The faster numbers sound even more like the mature Sheila Jordan: “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” has her liberally rewriting the iconic Gershwin melody, a tack she repeats as if to emphasize that this was a deliberate choice. The phrasing of “Comes Love” suggests the influence of Sarah Vaughan, as does “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” which is the kind of brief, one-chorus uptempo “chaser” that Vaughan always included in her sets.

Whoever the pianist is on the 1960 session — and I’d like to believe it’s Frishberg — he’s excellent; but Alan Broadbent, who plays on the 2021 recording, is still greater. Ms. Jordan has spent a large portion of her career in extended voice and bass collaborations with such top-flight players as Harvie S., who plays here, and Cameron Brown.  Even so, she sounds better with a top-drawer pianist such as the magnificent Mr. Broadbent. The storied keyboardist also gets two outstanding solo features: “What is This Thing Called Love,” laced with hints of the bebop variant, “Hot House,” and “Blue in Green,” credited to Miles Davis but played in obvious homage to Bill Evans. 

“Live at Mezzrow” starts with Abbey Lincoln’s thoughtful “Bird Alone,” but then Ms. Jordan gets both slower and faster, and both more deeply into the moment and into the song narrative, on Ray Noble’s “The Touch of Your Lips.” She opens with the verse, sung movingly rubato, and sustains the mood even when interrupted by shenanigans from the crowd that is about six inches from her in that itty-bitty space.

The chorus is significantly faster, followed by a scat chorus that’s faster still, and there’s also room for piano and bass solos along the way. In the course of this eight-minute number, she’s gone from a tender ballad to a bouncy scat episode and made every part of it somehow seem congruous with each other.

She sings her Parker tribute, a construct of “The Bird” and “Confirmation,” which incorporates a monologue about her own experiences with the Modern Jazz Savant, and yet a third “Bird” piece, Hoagy Carmichael’s “Baltimore Oriole,” which she’s been singing at least since that 1962 “Portrait of Sheila” album.

As a bonus track, this leads into a full version of Cole Porter’s “I Concentrate on You,” unlisted on the cover but quite lovely. There are more oft-recorded Sheila Jordan favorites, “Autumn in New York” and “Lucky to Be Me,” all of which serve as a reminder as to what a privilege it is to spend time with this extraordinary woman — something I’ve had the great pleasure of doing for nearly 50 years by now.  

Some things never change, and sometimes that’s a compliment. Ms. Jordan loves to take a standard famously written in 3/4 and jazz it up into swinging 4/4 time. She does this in 1960 with “I’ll Take Romance,” wherein, admittedly, there’s a little bit of awkwardness in making the lyric scan in that time signature, and she does it in 2021 with “Falling in Love with Love” (also on her 1962 album). Then as now, it’s a helluva way to sing a waltz.