Jordan plays a well known band leader whose grueling schedule leads to exhaustion and he ends up in a sanitarium to get much needed rest. His oh so greedy manager tells him he wouldn't be exhausted if he didn't play so many benefits. While in the sanitarium a little kid on crutches tells him he wants to be a cowboy and Jordan promises the kid he'll find him a place to be a real cowboy. Jordan drops off to sleep and starts dreaming that he and his band are in Lookout, Arizona at the H and H (standing for Health and Happiness) Ranch. At the dream ranch, Jordan and his Tympany Five are known as Two-Gun Jordan and his Jivin' Cowboys. A young woman (Suzette Harbin) and her brother (Bob Scott -who is a terrible actor but a wonderful horseman) own the ranch and the bad guy (Monte Hawley) is going to foreclose on them. Jordan's portrayal of a cowboy is a wonderful spoof on bronco riding, shooting and fist fights – it's hilarious. After a few adventures and just as the badmen are about to catch up with Jordan, he wakes up. He tells the little kid that he is going to Jordan's H and H Ranch and that all the little kids there will learn to be cowboys and cowgirls and get their health back. I was not familiar with Louis Jordan before watching this movie. I absolutely loved the movie – Jordan's personality was so charming and engaging and the music is great (early rock n roll elements are obvious in a couple of numbers), the plot is funny and the ending sweet. Many of Jordan's more famous specialty songs are here, including "Jack, You Dead," "Look-Out Sister," "Don't Burn the Candle at Both Ends" and "Barnyard Boogie." The one off-putting part of the movie was the song "You're Much Too Fat." If one just hears the song I suppose it may be a funny little ditty but to see it – the girl falling off the diving board, all the people around the pool laughing at her, her face showing her hurt – it came across as a cruel and hurtful song. Even so, I liked the other songs and downloaded a number of them from iTunes including one not in the movie "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens." This song immediately brought back a childhood memory. A standard response to the question "Who's there?" was "Nobody but us chickens." I had not thought about this in decades and certainly had no idea that the expression came from a Jordan song.
