Buffalo Bloviator

Dodo Greene performing at Anchor Bar in 2005
Photo taken by Buffalo Bloviator.
 
Buffalo bade farewell to beloved jazz diva Dodo Greene this afternoon in a moving memorial service held at Friendship Baptist Church on Clinton Street. Locally speaking, Dodo is most recently known for her 14-year stint at the Anchor Bar on Main near Allen. It has been standard practice, for those charged with entertaining visitors to Buffalo, to show off in one-stop fashion, an evening of saucy Dodo Greene and extra hot chicken wings. Dodo’s soulful standards and trademark naughty shtick assured both regulars and guests a lasting impression of our city’s cultural breadth and character. In 1962 Dodo Greene recorded her hit album “My Hour Of Need” and established herself the first female recording artist on Blue Note Records. 
    

 
Friendship Baptist Church This Afternoon.

 

A jam session at 166 Cedar Street followed the funeral.

The crowd at Dodo’s funeral was more than expected, judging from the fact that the printed programs ran out. Still, it’s funny in a way that Buffalo’s TV and radio stations didn’t pay more attention to the passing of this legendary figure. Couldn’t WBFO have halted its ordinary programming and played Dodo’s album? Couldn’t someone on the station have talked about her a little bit? (We don’t know for sure the station paid Dodo no notice, but none of our friends who usually listen to the station heard anything.) Likewise, couldn’t TV have paid Ms. Greene more than perfunctory notice? You have to wonder sometimes if anyone knows, really, who she was.
 
C A U T I O N –DO NOT PROCEED READING THE REST OF THIS STORY IF YOU ARE ADVERSE TO EXPLICIT LANGUAGE.
Everybody has a Dodo Greene story about her raucous way of communicating. Here is one of mine. The monster Buffalo pianist Wally Jedermann was called to a Dodo gig at the last minute to play piano in her band. The regular piano player couldn’t make it. Wally thought that the gig seemed to be going ok – however, throughout the performance, Dodo never actually communicated with him. The two had still had never met. Wally is also one of the funniest people I know and he has never been lost for words. The gig ended and Wally went outside to pack up his equipment into his car. Finally Wally got to meet Dodo Greene. She walked up to him and the first words out of her mouth were, “You must be eating some of that black pussy, you play so funky”. Dodo then walked away. This was the only time I have ever seen my friend Wally speechless.