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Sass Jordan performing at the Canada Day celebrations at the Mondial Loto-Quebec in Laval, in July, 2013. The rock icon died on Oct. 2 at the age of 65.Mario Beauregard/The Canadian Press
It is rare now for professional musicians to perform without in-ear monitors, especially in front of large audiences. Going without them involves the risk of poor sound, deafening volumes and not being able to hear yourself sing.
But Sass Jordan, undaunted, did just that at Toronto’s SARSstock benefit concert in 2003, in front of 500,000 people.
“Sass was old school,” said Derek Sharp, her husband and musical partner of 30 years. “From the first song, she unplugged her in-ears and sang the whole show without them. It’s just a skill from another time.”
Ms. Jordan, who died on Oct. 2 at the age of 65 of an undisclosed illness, was a Canadian rock icon and a raw-throated, powerhouse vocalist. She was also known to television audiences as a judge on Canadian Idol, appearing in all six seasons of the reality show from 2003 to 2008.
She spent a freewheeling youth in the rock ‘n’ roll trenches, leaving home at age 14, establishing herself in the local music scene and later touring for years throughout Quebec, Ontario and the Maritimes. She never looked back – an embodiment of the rock and roll road warrior.
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Ms. Jordan performs in front of 500,000 people at the concert for SARS relief at Downsview Park in Toronto in July, 2003.KEVIN FRAYER/The Canadian Press
Following the release of her debut Tell Somebody in 1988, she won a Juno Award for most promising female vocalist and relocated to Los Angeles. Her 1992 album Racine sold 450,000 copies in the United States and Canada, propelled by the hard-rocking, gospel-tinged single Make You A Believer. Billboard Magazine named her 1992’s Top Female Rock Artist of the year.
Trust In Me, a duet with Joe Cocker, appeared on the soundtrack to Whitney Houston movie The Bodyguard, which sold 45 million copies – the highest-selling film soundtrack of all time. Her success led her to tour and share stages with acts such as Van Halen, AC/DC, Aerosmith and the Steve Miller Band.
“Sass was tough, but also kind and generous,” her former manager and fellow Canadian Idol judge Jake Gold said. “That comes from years and years of being on the road. She was a trailblazer. There weren’t a lot of women fronting rock bands in the 80s and 90s, y’know?”
“There was a wisdom to her,” said singer-songwriter Emm Gryner. “Of all the bands I’ve been in, from David Bowie to Gowan, I learned the most about singing from Sass. She sang how she lived, which is just full out.”
Ms. Jordan’s professional life was interwoven with some of the biggest rock acts of her day – a situation her husband called “very Forrest Gump-like.”
At a Foo Fighters show in Toronto in 2015, the band invited her onstage for a cover of the Faces song Stay With Me. Drummer Taylor Hawkins introduced her as the person who had “taught a 22-year-old greenhorn like me how to be in a rock band, and gave me my first rock and roll cheque.”
Singer Dave Grohl went further: “If it weren’t for Sass Jordan, Taylor Hawkins wouldn’t be in the Foo Fighters!”
“We used to joke that if you played with her, you’d go on to be the biggest thing ever,” Mr. Sharp said. Mr. Hawkins went on to tour with Alanis Morissette, while another former bandmate, Peter Barbeau, joined Céline Dion’s band.
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Ms. Jordan in 1989. After winning a Juno Award, she moved from Montreal to Los Angeles.Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press
Born in Birmingham, England, on Dec. 23, 1960, Sarah (Sass) Jordan moved to Montreal with her family when she was three and grew up in Westmount. Her father, Albert Jordan, was a professor of French literature at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) and her mother, Jean Lanceman, was a classically trained dancer who performed for the Rambert Dance Company in London in the 1950s.
Sass’s first turns in front of the camera came as a girl in the NFB documentary The India Trip, which came out in 1971. Her family had moved to Pondicherry for a year, and those events were documented by filmmaker Bill Davies.
“We crossed the Atlantic on a Russian freighter and got off in Karachi, I think it was,” said her brother, Daniel Jordan. “We had a grand old time. In the film, you can see glimpses of Sass when she was nine, singing at the school she attended, and sitting with Indian girls picking nits out of each other’s hair.”
In India the Jordans rode the last of the country’s old steam trains, and spent time with the spiritual guru Mirra Alfassa, also known as The Mother. These experiences were formative for Sass and sowed a seed of deep spirituality within her.
The family home in Montreal was filled with classical music, but rock ’n’ roll came as a revelation. She started singing and playing guitar with friends in Westmount Park in the early 1970s, and by 16 was fronting bands in Montreal clubs. She sang and played bass for the local outfit the Pinups, and got used to the touring grind early on.
“They did the Quebec and northern Ontario circuit, all the little towns,” Mr. Sharp explained. “You had to play, like, six sets a night, until 3 a.m. You’d play for six nights, and you’d travel on Sunday, and then play the next week somewhere else. It was this constant playing of covers and then you’d slip in an original here and there. That’s how it was back then.”
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Ms. Jordan in November, 2012. During her career she shared stages with some of the world’s biggest rock acts, including Van Halen, AC/DC and Aerosmith.Ron Lyon/Reuters
Championed by local impresario Donald K. Donald in the early 1980s, she signed with Montreal’s Aquarius Records, home to acts such as April Wine and Corey Hart. The label paid her rent while she trekked across town every day to hone her songwriting chops with friend and musical partner Bill Beaudoin.
Around this time, she joined Montreal new wave band the Box as a backup singer. “I met her in 1982,” said Jean-Marc Pisapia, the Box’s lead singer and songwriter. “She came to an audition with [Québec singer] Marie Carmen, who also went on to do her own thing. They stayed with us for four and five years, respectively.”
“She was an incredible trooper, not bothered by the darker sides of the industry,” Mr. Pisapia added. “She navigated it all like she’d be doing it her whole life. I remember her at breakfast in the hotels checking out the hockey scores in the Journal de Montréal. . . She was an extremely versatile person, and very, very intelligent. She just adapted. And I think it showed in her career. That was Sass Jordan.”
In such a well-lived life, there are inevitably too many stories to tell. But standout tales include being courted to sing for Van Halen and charming LSD guru Timothy Leary so completely that he invited her to his death party.
On a blog post on her website, Ms. Jordan recalled being invited for secretive jams with Eddie and Alex Van Halen in Los Angeles, without realizing they were auditioning her to be their new singer. “When she found out, she said ‘That’s the worst idea in the world – a female singer in Van Halen!’” Mr. Sharp said. The gig went to Gary Cherone instead.
Of Mr. Leary, Mr. Sharp said, “They met in L.A. and she didn’t know who he was, but he took to her right away. He invited her to his death party, and wrote her this letter about how much he loved her.” Mr. Leary eventually died in his sleep, but Ms. Jordan was present in the days before, along with people like Oliver Stone and Yoko Ono.
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Two years after releasing her hit album Racine, Ms. Jordan followed it up with Rats, where she sang about addiction and relationships.The Canadian Press
There’s no justice in the music industry, and after Racine there was a sense that she never reached the level of success that others had predicted for her. Angst grunge music took over the airwaves, musical tastes shifted, and her style of blues-tinged rock fell out of favour somewhat.
But she kept working. In the early 2000s she starred in theatrical productions of the Vagina Monologues in Toronto and Winnipeg, and Love, Janis, an off-Broadway musical stage show about Janis Joplin, which led to the Canadian Idol gig.
Her last moments, surrounded by family, “couldn’t have been more beautiful,” Mr. Sharp said. She didn’t want a funeral or anything. She didn’t want people to make a fuss.”
“She did not believe in death,” added her brother. “She believed that when you die, you return to your natural state. You come into this life to do three or four things – those things are going to happen, no matter what. Everything in between is free will. She marched straight into this life, and she exited stage right. Then she was gone. She wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
Sarah (Sass) Jordan leaves her husband, Mr. Sharp; daughter, Stella Jordan-Sharp; stepdaughter, Brianne Sharp; brother, Daniel Jordan; and father, Albert Jordan.
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