PT Entertainment
Country music star was one of the last things Leslie Jordan added to his long list of joy-bringing talents before his unexpected death on Monday, Oct. 24, following a fatal car crash in Los Angeles at age 67. In one of his final interviews, a sit-down with CBS News, the beloved star opened up about being embraced by the genre’s community.
“So unexpected just to happen in my 60s – I’m a country music singer now,” he said, laughing. “I love Nashville and the way that Nashville embraced me, you know, and to be taken kind of serious, and to have made an album with Dolly Parton, Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile? That’s something.”
Last year, Jordan released his debut album Company’s Comin’, recorded in Nashville and Los Angeles during quarantine. The project features his versions of classic gospel hymns and an all-star guest list that placed him alongside Tanya Tucker, Ashley McBryde, T.J. Osborne, and more.
“I had a Sunday Instagram singing hymns, and people started tuning in, and somehow from that, we decided to make an album,” he explained.
It was another accidental endeavor that came naturally to him — much like his quick rise to internet meme stardom during the pandemic — but was rooted in something much more meaningful to him. “To be able to come back to these hymns with no axe to grind, I’ve taken care of all that,” he told Rolling Stone. “I’m 22 years clean and sober, so you do a lot of work in A.A. about anger and resentment and all of that. You just come to realize, everybody back then was doing the best they could with the light they had to see with.”
When he first started posting hymns and lighthearted comedy videos, Jordan had around 800,000 followers. At the time of his passing, that number had skyrocketed to almost 6 million.
“I blew up, give me a good pandemic and I flourish,” he told CBS News. “I was just thinking, ‘My gosh who are these people that want to hear what I have to say?’ It was just the innocence of it I guess.”
The day before his death, Jordan shared a video of himself singing “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder,” a hymn about going to heaven. “When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more/And the morning breaks, eternal, bright and fair,” Jordan sang before being joined by Danny Myrick for the refrain. “When the saved of Earth shall gather over on the other shore/And the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there.”
