Pianist Duke Jordan dead at age 84

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Aug. 12 (UPI) -- Famed bebop pianist Duke Jordan died last week in the Copenhagen suburb of Valby, Denmark, at the age of 84.

The jazz icon died Tuesday in the Nordic country he had called home since his self-imposed exile in 1978, when he relocated there from the United States after conquering his heroin addiction, The New York Times said.

The report gave no cause of death.

Jordan helped introduce the improvisational jazz style known as bebop in the 1940s and played alongside such jazz legends as Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, with whom he recorded numerous masterpieces, the Times said.

The bebop legend was also known for his then unprecedented interracial marriage to white jazz singer Sheila Jordan in 1952, which occurred in a time when segregation remained legal in the United States and which ultimately forced the couple apart.

The Times said that after conquering a heroin habit he acquired in the '60s, Jordan moved to Denmark where he continued to perform his revolutionary form of music until his death.