Soulful saxophonist Clifford Jordan is captured live on stage in Chicago with Al Haig, Wilbur Ware and Kenny Clarke!
Here's the scoop from Resonance...
We're thrilled to kick off another series of RSD Black Friday announcements with a never-before-heard release by the Chicago-born saxophone icon Clifford Jordan with a stellar quartet featuring bebop pioneers — pianist Al Haig (Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis), bassist Wilbur Ware, and drummer Kenny Clarke — captured live at Joe Segal's Jazz Showcase in Chicago, IL, September 30-October 1, 1976.
This is part of Resonance's ongoing series of releases from Joe Segal's Jazz Showcase archives following acclaimed releases by Joe Henderson, Ahmad Jamal, Mal Waldron and Yusef Lateef in April of 2026. The deluxe package includes newly curated liner notes by veteran jazz journalist Ted Panken, who was at the show and interviewed Clifford Jordan and Wilbur Ware at the time. Cover photo by Brian McMillen.
Visit resonancerecords.org and recordstoreday.com for more info.
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CLIFFORD JORDAN – LET IT RING: LIVE AT THE JAZZ SHOWCASE
Newly unearthed 1976 quartet performances with Al Haig, Wilbur Ware and Kenny Clarke
Limited-Edition, 180-gram 2-LP package from Resonance Records, with 6300-word liner note essay by Ted Panken, including excerpts from Panken’s contemporaneous interviews with Clifford Jordan and Wilbur Ware/ Available Exclusively for RSD Black Friday on November 27, 2026 with CD and digital download editions available December 4, 2026.
Only Joe Segal could have conceived and presented the extraordinary once-in-a-lifetime quartet that performed during the first week of October 1976 at the Jazz Showcase that Resonance Records documents on Let It Ring: Clifford Jordan, Live at the Jazz Showcase. The 14-track performance, culled from the first two nights of the engagement, captures the first-ever bandstand encounter between four legendary figures in the music and the city. The performance brings together two Chicago icons – the luminous tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan (1931-1993) and sui generis bassist Wilbur Ware (1923-1979) – with a pair of bebop pioneers – Al Haig (1922-1982), Charlie Parker’s first-call pianist, and Kenny Clarke (1914-1986), the father of modern drum expression. Fifty years later, the interplay between four of the most individualistic practitioners who ever played their respective instruments while learning each other’s musical moves sounds as fresh, spontaneous, and emotionally transparent as it did to the audience that packed the low-ceilinged basement of the Happy Medium disco during that epochal week.
Released by Resonance Records in cooperation with the Clifford Jordan Estate and produced by noted “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman with assistance from co-producer Michael Velasco, associate producer Zak Shelby-Szyszko, and Wayne Segal, Joe Segal’s son, Let It Ring comes in a limited-edition, deluxe 180-gram 2-LP package with new, extensive liner notes written by Ted Panken that includes excerpts from interviews that he conducted with Jordan and Ware during the week of the gig. The vinyl set comes out on November 27, 2026, with the CD and digital downloads to follow on December 4, 2026.
Joe Segal (1926-2020), who started presenting jam sessions around Chicago in 1947, knew more than most about how to organize a band. A staunch believer in the mantra “bebop is the future,” he possessed the hard-earned intuition to anticipate which combinations of master improvisers would facilitate creative interplay; the infrastructure and logistical chops to provide them with a viable platform; and the grit and stamina to do whatever was needed to actualize his musical dreams. Which is why, when Segal learned that Clarke – who had visited the U.S. only once since moving to France in 1976 – and Haig would perform in Chicago at a tribute concert for Dizzy Gillespie, he did not hesitate to commit this inspired “crime of opportunity.”
Restored and mastered from the original cassette tapes at Resonance Records Studios by engineer and Resonance founder George Klabin and Michael Velasco, with LP mastering by Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab in Salina, KS, and pressed at Quebec's boutique audiophile pressing plant Le Vinylist, the sound is vivid and present.
In an interview with liner note author Ted Panken towards the end of the week, Clifford Jordan spoke enthusiastically about what had already transpired on the Jazz Showcase bandstand. “It’s amazing,” Jordan said. “I’m fascinated every night. It’s a good experience for me to play with Kenny Clarke, and compare what I’m doing with what he’s doing, and try to listen to us both at the same time. Also, it’s my first time playing with Al Haig. I’ve been playing with Wilbur Ware for a long time. He’s always been startling and has a strong bass line. You can't chain Wilbur down to play any particular way, just as I can't be chained down to play any particular way. I’m sure it’s the same with Al Haig and Kenny Clarke. So, in actuality, when you listen to this group, there’s four different things going on. We're all playing the same tune, but everybody's playing it their way, and it still works out into one.”
“Music is a social thing,” Jordan added. “You play whatever you have around you. The most important thing about improvisation is to make the music fit. All the pieces have to fit together like a puzzle, so it sounds like one thing. This is the way I think when I play.”
Producer and Resonance co-president Zev Feldman says, "Clifford Jordan's music is deeply rooted in bebop, but he had his own personal perspectives on it. With the passage of time it's gratifying to see that the world is now catching up, realizing Jordan's greatness and appreciating just how incredible he was. Here at Resonance, we are proud to work with Wayne Segal, who now owns the Jazz Showcase, to celebrate the memory of one of jazz's greatest impresarios, Wayne's father, Joe. I'm very lucky to have known Joe over the course of many years. Whenever I'd come to Chicago, I would try to get together with him; he always knew I was looking for material to release. In 2011, I began to work with him, delving into his archives and going over his collection of extraordinary tapes. Now, 15 years later, here we are, releasing gems from his archive, which forms an incredible historical record of jazz music."
From the aural evidence, it’s reasonable to extrapolate that Kenny Clarke, Al Haig and Wilbur Ware shared that perspective as a default basis of operations. Throughout the proceedings, they hew to the credo that Ware expressed when Panken interviewed him on the same day. “Every individual is his own man; he’s got to have his own creed,” Ware told Panken. “I used to play on Jimmy Blanton’s style, but I was me — I’d hear something a different way and I’d have to play it my way. It’s up to the individual. That’s what music is about for anybody. If you’re a young musician, you might play some of the things your idol does, but you can’t go through life playing his style. Where you at if you have no style of your own?”
