Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band album cover
Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band

Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band

1976
RCA Victor

In some parts of America, the Whip Inflation Now era might as well have been another Great Depression — so why not let the drop-dead, burning-Bronx New York have a shot at putting together a good old-fashioned big band? The brainchild of Stony Browder Jr. and August Darnell, Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band thrived off a sardonic-yet-sincere disco-fied and Latin-inflected take on American jazz of forty years previous, with lead singer Cory Daye as the woman who’d lend them a voice to die for. That meant a great cover of “Night and Day” and six other songs that Cole Porter probably wishes he would’ve written — including the gorgeous love-conquers-malaise ballad “Hard Times,” the wobble-kneed zoot-suit-city swing of “I’ll Play the Fool,” and a hit in “Cherchez La Femme” that already sounded like a classic standard in Bicentennial America, even more so nearly a half-century later.

Nate Patrin

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