Louis Jordan's Caldonia

The mid-1900s was a timeframe in which the African-American community began to expand the boundaries of their linguistic culture. It was the timeframe in which the use of jive had extended into the everyday lives of average people, professional artists, and street corner rhymesters (Burley, 1944). Jive was defined by African-American journalist, Dan Burley, as the “language that is improvisatory, dynamic, and ever changing” (Burley, 1944). It was a language that was used as “a medium of escape for the people pressed against the wall for centuries” — some even viewed the language as “a political act” against the modern day oppressors (Burley, 1944). In addition to jive, there were many other distinct elements of vocal artistry that emerged
What makes your big head so hard?
I love her. I love her just the same
Crazy bout that woman cause Caldonia is her name ‘Caldonia’ (Jordan, 1945)

— as seen from this excerpt of Caldonia, Louis Jordan composed a set of lyrics that is essentially fragmented between short recitations and a follow-up shout of “Caldonia!”. The fact of the matter was that he did not necessarily perform the track in a traditional manner—instead, he performed the track in a semi-conversational fashion as if he was personally speaking with his lover, Caldonia. He included various forms of rhyme within the conversation-like lyrics, and he furthermore creates his own cue for when he was breaking into song within his short recitations—the shout of “Caldonia!”.
A different method of song delivery can be observed in Louis Jordan’s song: Saturday Night Fish Fry. The song is similar to Caldonia as it is composed to portray a short narrative. The difference, however, is that Louis Jordan establishes the narrative from start to finish. He specifically does this by implementing a more interconnected rhyme scheme throughout the song. Jordan used an AA BB CC rhyme scheme, which allowed him to fit his recited words with the upbeat tempo he intended to
The narrative is woven into the song as whole, allowing the story itself to be the song—rather than creating the two separate features such as in Caldonia. Louis Jordan evidently uses this method of song delivery in order to depict his mastery as a rhyming storyteller. In addition, it was interesting to point out that the band members did not play louder than him, resulting in Jordan’s voice leading the band’s rhythm as opposed to strictly the instruments. The strategy used by Jordan was influential enough to seep into today’s hip-hop—which is, as a matter of fact, a music genre that expects the emcees to be rhyming storytellers