A little research discloses that the man who did that brilliant dual-personality lip-synch performance to Charlie Parker’s and Dizzy Gillespie’s “Leap Frog” is named Jeremiah McDonald. He has other clips on YouTube, none of them based in jazz. Still, jazz listeners who dig Spike Jones (there are more of them than you might think) will get a nostalgic charge from McDonald’s treatment of this classic by Doodles Weaver, the Jones band’s all-purpose nut.
For more about Jeremiah McDonald, aka The Reverend Cornelius Blow, go here.
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
When I saw the clip of McDonald doing Bird and Dizzy last week my first thought was of the scene in the film “The Errand Boy” where Jerry Lewis does a pantomime to the Basie band playing Frank Foster’s “Blues in Hoss’ Flat.” Of course, it took me all of two seconds to find it on YouTube.
You can see it at: