SASS JORDAN : Blues Singer’s Rebellion Lives in Vocals From the Heart

“I should have been born black,” lamented Sass Jordan, rubbing her fingers through her blond hair. “I identify so strongly with blacks sometimes that I’m black in my mind. But instead I’m this skinny white chick. But, dammit, I’m thankful for one thing--my soul is black.”

So is her vocal style. Jordan reeled off the names of black singers who have influenced her--including Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, Al Green and Howlin’ Wolf. Since Jordan dismisses contemporary R&B; as wimpy and whitewashed, she prefers to apply her soul-and-blues-drenched vocal style to hard-rock music. Though fans are just starting to discover it, critics have long been raving about her Impact/MCA album “Racine,” named after a Quebec town where she vacationed while growing up in Montreal.

Jordan flashes a Tina Turner-like snarl on roof-rattling numbers, and an intimate, bluesy wail on torch-like ballads.

“I try to smother a song in passion like Aretha and Chaka do,” said Jordan, 31. “To spill my guts into it so much that people can’t help (but) respond.”

“Racine” is her second album. Her first was “Tell Somebody,” which established her as a prominent rocker in Canada four years ago. “That was mechanical pop while this second album shows I have a heart and soul,” said Jordan.

Among the topics in the current album is rebellion. “I’m an expert on rebellion,” said Jordan, who ran away at 14 to escape the existence offered by her father, a professor of French literature, and her mother, a ballet dancer.

“I didn’t want that clean, wholesome life,” said the singer, who now lives in the San Fernando Valley. “It felt so fake. I identified with real people, oppressed people who were outside that life. I wanted to taste real life--street life.”

Now she acknowledges that she immersed herself a bit too deeply into that life. By her late teens she was already an ex-junkie. “I felt like I was 40 then,” she recalled.

She channeled some of that rebellious energy into singing, building a name for herself fronting bands in the Montreal club scene until a solo recording opportunity came along.

Is Jordan finally through rebelling? “The rebel is still in me,” she replied. “I just express it differently these days.”