Blue Note Backstreets: Dodo Greene
From Blue Note to Buffalo Wings
Dodo Greene sang throughout her childhood in Buffalo, NY. She appeared several times on the Buster Brown Shoes Amateur Hour radio show and was a member of an ensemble known as Miss Margaret Scott's Personality Steppers. She came from a musical family. Her two brothers, James and Sonny Hawkins, were a drummer and a saxophone player respectively. Her sister, Alice, was a dancer. Despite this, Dodo didn’t seriously consider performing to be a career option. She planned to pursue an education in medicine.
Fate intervened, however. One night, she was asked to step in as a last-minute substitute for a local group led by a drummer named Cozy Cole. After hearing her, Cole wanted her to join the band full time, but Dodo turned him down. However, the seed had been planted, and eventually Greene set her sights on a professional singing career. She became a popular performer in Buffalo, playing at some of the city’s historic clubs, such as Club Moon-Glow. In 1959, she moved to New York to pursue a professional opportunity with Cozy Cole’s friend and colleague, Cab Calloway.
Calloway’s style of jazz wasn’t exactly current in the late 1950s, but he still had some sizzle and his name carried weight. She joined his Cotton Comes to Harlem production at the Wintergarden Theater. Greene’s earthy R&B-tinged singing earned her a reputation among both fans and fellow vocalist, including Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Dinah Washington—the last of whom it seems Greene is most often compared. Dodo also became famous for her spirited imitation of jazz legend Louis Armstrong, complete with a raspy growl and his signature giant handkerchief.
She released an album on Time Records in 1959, Ain’t What You Do, and toured the US and Europe. Around the same time, Blue Note Records was hitting its stride, with a prolific string of incredible albums by men who would go on to become legends (or were already there). And when I say men, I do mean men. At the time, Blue Note had only one woman on their roster of artists, German-born pianist Jutta Hipp. Jazz (like just about every musical style at the time) wasn’t exactly welcoming to women who did anything other than sing, and Blue Note wasn’t really interested in vocalists, male or female.
Still someone at Blue Note must have felt like taking a chance. In 1962, they signed Dodo Greene to the label—only their second female artist. She was paired with some Blue Note’s most dependable players, including two of my personal favorites: Ike Quebec (sax) and Grant Green (guitar). Her one and only Blue Note album, My Hour Of Need, was recorded in 1962 and released a year later. Blue Note would sign more funk, soul, and R&B artists in the 1970s, as the label changed leadership and struggled to keep pace with changing musical tastes, but Dodo Greene’s album is very much an anomaly in the early 1960s.
The title track, opening with organ playing by Sir Charles Thompson, sounds much more like something that would have been on Atlantic Records. It’s bluesy and soulful, with a splash of pop sensibility when pop was the Rat Pack, Nat Cole, and Etta James. Greene boasts a sultry voice with a hint of late-night raspiness in places.
“Down By the Riverside” is a jauntier number with a bit of gospel swinging to it, and “Jazz In My Soul” has some Peggy Lee about it. But for Greene’s deeper vocals and the sax, “Let There Be Love” could have been recorded by a doo-wop group like the Platters or the Drifters. If you’re looking for that classic Blue Note sound, you’re not going to find it here, otehr than in little hints, since her backing players are exceptional. But if you are a fan of soul and blues releases from Atlantic and Chess Records around this time, and a slightly jazzier take on the Chicago blues and slow grind sounds, then My Hour of Need will serve you well.
In 1963, however, if just wasn’t what Blue Note fans wanted, and those who weren’t fans of Blue Note weren’t necessarily looking to the label for a release like this. It is indeed an outlier (though not alone—we’ll get to Dodo Greene’s contemporary, Sheila Jordan, next). My Hour of Need didn’t do much business and rapidly passed into relative obscurity. Even today, when you can find a reasonable number of reviews of lesser-known Blue Note releases, not many have a listen to this album. And to be fair, it’s not a great album—though it is an album with some great moments. It’s a very pleasant listen, though, and worth giving more than a few spins.
Given the poor performance of My Hour of Need, Greene didn’t release a second album on Blue Note. In fact, this was pretty much it for her recording career, though she enjoyed a very healthy career as a live performer for decades. In the early 2000s (she passed away in 2006), you could could find her in her native Buffalo on stage at the Anchor Bar—birthplace of the buffalo wing.
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Noir & B: The Sultry Sound of Slow Grind Fever (Diabolique magazine)