dr. buzzard's original savannah band - "i'll play the fool" (from the very best of dr. buzzard's original savannah band, available for purchase here.)

"i'll play the fool" is one of the great love songs, as effective an argument in favor of the emotion as "cherchez la femme" is against it. this might not be immediately noticeable b/c it's so incredibly danceable. consider these lines :

and i'm gonna go to school again, boy, for you / just to get my equivalency diploma

i'll grow a tail or two for you / spend the rest of my days locked up in the zoo

i'll play the fool for you, oh girl / buy you things that i cannot afford

what can't be rendered here quite so easily is the swing time salsoul (and salsa) saunter of the savannah band itself. (there are few bands in the annals of rock that are w/o both predecessors and successors, wholly singular acts, and dr. buzzard's is one of those bands.) even more difficult to transliterate, and more peculiar b/c it's delivered in spoken language, is cory daye's glossolalia near song's end. it is the v. sound of love, a whirl of words and deeds, impossible pledges, deathless devotions that r-r-r-r-rolls right off the tongue and hits the heart dead-on.

and did i mention you can dance to it?