In the 1940’s, there were two black singers who crossed over from Race Records (as Billboard called its bluegum charts until 1949, when the phrase Rhythm & Blues was adopted) to the white Pop charts. Nat King Cole, the more successful of the two singers, was eventually swallowed by the tamer, white music. One of the most inventive West Coast R&B singers of the early 40’s, by the year of his death, 1965, Cole had been reduced to singing “Tne Ballad of Cat Ballou” with Stubby Kaye. The other singer was a man named Louis Jordan. Although he is largely forgotten today, Jordan did more to define Hep and to prepare white folks for the coming of rock ’n’ roll than any other man of that era.