Swingin' Sunday Sounds to Quarantine By!

Thinking of our friends in NYC and the heroes across the nation - doctors, nurses, first responders, EMTs - as we do our bit by staying home. While writing this, watching a terrific William Cameron Menzies film on TCM's Noir Alley. Staying home - and enjoying it - is the order of the day.



Among those good souls doing worthy presentations to improve this shelter-in-place reality, historians and comedy lovers Ben Model, Steve Massa and Mana Allen have been offering The Silent Comedy Watch Party from their living room on Sunday afternoons at 3:00 pm EST.



Episode 3 of the The Silent Comedy Watch Party will be later today. Around the world, we can always use a laugh and the wacky comedies of yore, featuring everyone from Snub Pollard and Hank Mann to Buster Keaton, still deliver the goods a century later.



Getting back to the topic of today's post and segueing from comedy to music, the recent passings of Ellis Marsalis, Bucky Pizzarelli, Wallace Roney and Bill Withers have us thinking of great sounds. Music gets us through the rough spots, whether it's complete (and epic) concerts by the incomparable David Bowie and the equally incomparable Queen found on YouTube, songs by a host of 1970's R&B greats (Sly Stone, Bobby Womack, Curtis Mayfield), or the latest Norman Bates Memorial Soundtrack Show, featuring the orchestral sounds by Elfman (Danny), Friedhoffer (Hugo), Herrmann (Bernard), Raskin (David), Rózsa (Miklós), Scott (Raymond), Shield (LeRoy) and Sondheim (Stephen) on KFJC.


Illustration by Judy Zillen





The Rx and killer app, as always for us at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog: hard swinging jazz that serves a unique blend of blues and bebop with joie de vivre to spare.



For Swingin' Sunday Sounds to Quarantine By today, we pay tribute to the intrepid, witty and always swingin' tenor saxophonists Eddie Lockjaw Davis and Johnny Griffin.



These guys are all-time favorites here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog and never fail to lift our spirits.



Eddie and Johnny combine prodigious chops with an excellent sense of humor.



They exemplify the idea that it's essential to have fun while you play - and swing all the way!



Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis can be heard on numerous recordings by The Count Basie Orchestra, including the iconic Sinatra At The Sands. Johnny Griffin, who joined Lionel Hampton's killer big band at the age of 17, made a gazillion records for Prestige, Riverside, Blue Note, Black Lion, SteepleChase and other labels.



At one point Johnny was a cornerstone of an astonishingly good Thelonious Monk Quartet, along with drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Ahmed-Abdul Malik.





Gotta love Davis' gritty, blues-drenched (Coleman Hawkins-ish) sound and Griffin's uncanny ability to come up with a hilarious quote from cartoon or movie music in the middle of a blistering solo at the most ridiculously fast of tempos.



Johnny, Lockjaw and frequent bandmates Junior Mance, Larry Gales and Ben Riley - we salute you and miss you!