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July 23, 2008
Retrohump: Picking Dr. Buzzard Clean
Contrary to the frequent posts that (hopefully) suggest otherwise, I'm occasionally quite dense and incurious. I'm sure I must have skimmed past the sampled source of the hook in M.I.A.'s "Sunshowers" dozens of times during the buzz around Arular's release, but it only even registered to me that it was a sample when I heard it playing from inside a row house during Boyz in the Hood. Even then I didn't put in any sort of search for the original version, content to let Diplo's beats lay claim to a definitive usage. So, when Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band belatedly entered my headspace within the last week in the midst of the production compilation Going Places: the August Darnell Years, it felt unnecessarily revelatory. I certainly wasn't aware that M.I.A.'s beguiling hook was actually a workproduct of ZE Records' genius in residence Kid Creole. The combination of the strange childish hook and singer Cory Daye's smooth smoky verses has entranced brainy hip-hop artists well before Maya, having been previously sampled by De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, Doug E. Fresh, and Ghostface Killah. So if you've been willfully ignorant as I was for so long, here's the goods...
Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band - "Sunshower"
Some homemade slideshows aside, there's no footage of the much admired cult classic available. But it's worth your time to check another hit from the band's 1976 self-titled debut...
Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band - "Cherchez Le Femme"
(1976 music video)
This fuzzy (and perhaps subtly sped up) VHS transfer oddly captures the band out of time feel "Dr. Buzzard" 's ensemble was aiming for. They were a late 70s disco/R & B group dressed up in 40s swing band drag. Baby-faced Darnell tickles the baby grand, his everpresent Kid Creole zoot suit making more sense here than it would when he would go on to form the Coconuts. His sidekick Coati Mundi is stationed on xylophone. Cory Daye's old-phonograph vocals are a perfect match to her Rosie the Riveter hair and housedress. The retro spell is complicated slightly by 70s specific references to the early girl trouble of the band's manager Tommy Mottola, later known as the CEO of Sony Music, Micheal Jackson's "devil," and the man who brought us Hall & Oates.
Most of you probably just recognize the song's hook from Ghostface Killah's Supreme Clientele reworking, "Cherchez La Ghost," recorded long after said Mr. Mottola had put his romantic worries behind him and bagged Mariah Carey. Personally I think Ghost's aggressive delivery stomps on the grace of the original's easy melody, but I become less of a hip hop fan every second I spend away from the 90s, so maybe I'm not the one to ask. Direct comparison facilitated after the jump...
Ghostface Killah - "Cherchez La Ghost"
Posted by Jeff Klingman at July 23, 2008 11:05 AM
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Comments
just about the loveliest song ever ever.
Posted by: ella at July 31, 2008 07:35 AM
