JOHNNY GRIFFIN and JO STAFFORD R.I.P.

I was waiting for the third (it still often does seem these deaths come in threes, doesn’t it?), but didn’t want to let too much time go by before I acknowledged the passing of two musical greats often overlooked.

Jo Stafford was the voice of the late 1940s-early 1950s in terms of “pop” music in many ways. (The early ‘40s too, as part of “The Pied Pipers” who sang for the Tommy Dorsey Band and also featured the young Frank Sinatra as the other distinct voice among that group.)

I loved Stafford’s voice as a kid (especially the ubiquitous pre-rock’n’roll hit that now sounds torturously simplistic and repetitive “Shrimp Boats”), and later as I got older I still dug it as did almost every musician I ever met or played with in the jazz world of the late 1950s and early ‘60s.

(TIME wrote that she was “as fine a musical artist as any in the 20th century, up there in a group that included Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland and Peggy Lee.” Some group! [here's a link to a late TV performance of Stafford and Ella, see how controlled and understated Stafford's voice is, nowhere near Ella's brilliant technique(s) but who ever was? Stafford's was a different kind of musicianship genius])

She was also shy, and along with her husband (arranger Paul Weston) a bit of a wise guy (they made “novelty” tunes where she sang off key and he played the piano melodramatically etc.).

But it was her disembodied voice coming out of those old tube radios, especially at night, that got to me. Mel Torme was known as “the velvet fog,” which I always thought was a way too obvious sales gimmick, but Jo Stafford’s voice actually did come on like a velvet fog.

I can hear it now, in my head, still singing “You Belong to Me“ and I’m back in Belmar, New Jersey, “down the shore” lying on the beach in the sun listening to the sounds of the waves and the kids, muffled in that beach/ocean summer way except for the foggy tones of Stafford’s voice emanating from various portable tube radios, like my big brother Robert’s (an example of her early talent is her '44 recording of "Long Ago and Far Away," try listening to that and not getting nostalgic for something!).

I never saw Stafford perform live, but I saw Johnny Griffin several times. I remember one time distinctly because it was one of the few times I went to Birdland, the “uptown” jazz club (I rarely made it above 14th Street in those days—the late ‘50s and early ‘60s— the downtown, hipster rap was “anything higher than 14th street and I get the bends”).

I was with my friend “Spanish Harry” (he wasn’t Spanish so I have no idea where that nickname came from, but everyone had one when I was a kid and young man) to specifically see Griffin and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis play together in a battle of the saxes that somehow fueled our imaginations for another “horn fight at the OK Corral” (see THE BEATS, edited by Seymour Krim).

They didn’t disappoint, as Griffin never did [the only youtube video I could find of them playing was done later and not nearly as exciting as their early bouts were in public, but here's a link to some '60s Griffin, not the best but a little taste of his talent]. He was known in some circles as “the fastest sax in jazz,” and had played with Monk and Trane and a lot of the greats, but never got the recognition he deserved, as far as I’m concerned.

Part of that was due to his seemingly “reactionary” (a term thrown around too much later in the 1960s and ‘70s) response to “free jazz” that took over the music for a while in the ‘60s. He didn’t dig it.

He moved to Europe where he played out his life like a lot of ex-pat US jazz musicians, especially African-American ones, being treated with the respect and admiration and gigs that a great artist deserves.

From all I heard, the decades after their initial US triumphs for Stafford and Griffin were filled with lots of music and contentment. May we all be so lucky.