Oscar Brown, Jr. (1926-2005): Legendary, iconic, and innovative composer, singer, songwriter, lyricist, playwright, actor, poet, ensemble leader, teacher, and political and cultural activist

SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR:  KOFI  NATAMBU

  SUMMER, 2016

  VOLUME THREE           NUMBER ONE

MARY LOU WILLIAMS

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of: 
 
JULIUS HEMPHILL
June 18-24

ARTHUR BLYTHE
June 25-July 1

OSCAR BROWN, JR.
July 2-July 8

DONNIE HATHAWAY
July 9-July 15

EUGENE McDANIELS
July 16-July 22

ROBERTA FLACK
July 23-July 29

WOODY SHAW
July 30-August 5

FATS DOMINO
August 6-August 12

CLIFFORD BROWN
August 13-August 19

BLIND WILLIE McTELL
August 20-August 26

RAHSAAN ROLAND KIRK
August 27-September 2

CHARLES BROWN
September 3-September 9



http://www.allmusic.com/artist/oscar-brown-jr-mn0000894827/biography 


Oscar Brown, Jr.

(1926-2995)

Artist Biography by Jason Ankeny

 

OSCAR BROWN, JR.
(b. October 10, 1926--d. May 29, 2005) 

 

Although rooted in jazz, singer, poet, and activist Oscar Brown, Jr. defied musical categorization throughout his long and eclectic career -- a forerunner of the political consciousness that would become predominant in soul, funk, and hip-hop in the decades to follow, his efforts to exact social change spread across the arts and even into government, spurring two unsuccessful but memorable campaigns for office. Born on Chicago's South Side on October 10, 1926, Brown was the son of a successful attorney and property broker who wanted his firstborn someday to assume control of the family business; instead, Brown was drawn to writing and performing, and by 15 was a regular on writer Studs Terkel's radio program Secret City. After skipping two grades, he entered the University of Wisconsin at 16, but finding the world of academia little to his liking, Brown returned to broadcasting, and in 1944 was tapped to host Negro Newsfront, the nation's first black news radio broadcast. Dubbed "America's first Negro newscaster," he relinquished the gig in 1948 to run for the Illinois state legislature on the Progressive Party ticket -- he did not win, and spent the remainder of the decade working on writer/producer Richard Durham's Black Radio Days series, followed by a two-year stint in the U.S. Army. 

Though a card-carrying Communist, in 1952 Brown mounted an unsuccessful campaign for U.S. Congress on the Republican ticket, aligning himself with the right wing solely to get his name on the ballot. (He resigned from the Communist Party in 1956, declaring himself "just too black to be red.") Through all this time, singing and songwriting remained little more than sidelines, but that all changed in 1958, when Brown attended the opening of Lorraine Hansberry's landmark play A Raisin in the Sun -- there he met Hansberry's husband, the New York City music publisher Robert Nemiroff, and their fledgling friendship soon yielded a record deal with Columbia. In 1960, Brown collaborated with Max Roach on the legendary bop drummer's trenchant civil rights project We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, soon followed by his solo debut, Sin & Soul -- launched via an extended residency at the famed Village Vanguard, the record featured readings of popular jazz instrumentals like Nat Adderley's "Work Song" and Mongo Santamaria's "Afro Blue" with new, socially charged lyrics penned by Brown himself. "Brown Baby," a lullaby written for his newborn son, went on to emerge as something of a modern standard, with covers by vocalists including Mahalia Jackson and Lena Horne.

The creative and commercial success of Sin & Soul made Brown a star, and after writing lyrics for Miles Davis' classic "All Blues," he reunited with Hansberry and Nemiroff for Kicks & Co., a stage musical that earned Brown an unheard-of two-hour appearance on NBC television's Today Show. The show nevertheless closed shortly after its preview series at Chicago's McCormick Place in 1961, and after reworking some of the material to create a one-man show, Oscar Brown Entertains, he toured the U.S. and Europe, in 1962 stopping long enough to host the television series Jazz Scene USA, during taping meeting his future wife, singer/dancer Jean Pace. Through his concert appearances and LPs, including 1963's Tells It Like It Is! and 1965's Mr. Oscar Brown, Jr. Goes to Washington, he kept his social and political beliefs front and center, refusing to accept the common wisdom that mainstream audiences wanted no part of such stuff -- with Pace, he wrote and directed a series of stage shows casting teens from Chicago's impoverished neighborhoods, and the most famous of the couple's collaborations, 1967's Opportunity Please Knock, was even produced in conjunction with the Blackstone Rangers youth gang. The Browns' work with underprivileged youth also earned a 1968 invitation from Gary, IN, mayor Richard Hatcher to helm a summer talent project that was a springboard for then-unknowns the Jackson 5 and actor/singer Avery Brooks. 

 

After relocating to San Francisco in 1969, Brown and Pace transformed the stage comedy Big Time Buck White into a musical that, upon making the leap to Broadway, starred boxing legend Muhammad Ali in the title role. Brown spent much of the 1970s as an artist-in-residence teaching musical theater at Washington, D.C.'s Howard University, New York City's Hunter College, and Chicago's Malcolm X College. In 1972, after a seven-year hiatus from the recording studio, he delivered Where Are You, followed by a pair of releases for Atlantic: 1973's Brother Where Are You and 1975's Fresh. Also in 1975, he starred in the revived Evolution of the Blues and starred in a Chicago television special, Oscar Brown Is Back in Town, which earned a pair of local Emmy Awards. Brown was next tapped to host the acclaimed 1980 PBS series From Jump Street: The Story of Black Music, and went on to appear in network series including Brewster Place and Roc. His first album in two decades, Then and Now, appeared on Weasel Disc in 1995, and in 2001 he was the subject of a documentary, Music Is My Life, Politics My Mistress. Brown died from complications from a blood infection on May 29, 2005.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/30/AR2005053000996.html

Appreciation  

A Singer Who Played It Cool & Kept the Heat On 
by Richard Harrington 
Washington Post 
May 31, 2005

Singer-songwriter Oscar Brown Jr. spun actor’s magic on Washington stages in the early '60s, transforming himself into the phantasmagoria of characters who inhabited his exquisite creations: the inquisitive child of "Dat Dere" and the tired junkman of "Rags and Old Iron"; the coldhearted slave auctioneer of "Bid 'Em In" and the black man demanding reparations in the proto-rap tune "Forty Acres and a Mule."

A quest for social justice underpinned the music of Oscar Brown Jr., who died Sunday at age 78.

He was the proud, loving father of "Brown Baby" and "Maggie," written for the son and daughter who'd grow up to perform with him; the sly sensualist who could conjure a waitress's charms in "Hazel's Hips" and hilariously celebrate having two girlfriends in "Living Double in a World of Trouble."

Brown's astonishing 1960 debut, "Sin & Soul," and his 1964 live disc, "Mr. Oscar Brown Jr. Goes to Washington," are monuments to socially conscious songwriting on a par with the best work of Curtis Mayfield and Gil Scott-Heron, who also wrote about the full panoply of black life -- joy, anger, love, frustration, humor -- and helped define Afrocentrism. Brown did it first, in a way that managed to be both entertaining and serious, melding soul, jazz and musical theater into a body of work that always deserved far more recognition than it got.

"I started out to be an Open Negro in the late '50s," Brown told me in 1992. "That meant that I wanted to reflect -- in my presentation and in what I wrote -- the things that I'd experienced, to be black, not incidentally but deliberately , culturally . I'd like to think I was in the wave [of Afrocentric artists]; which drop of water I turned out to be, I don't know."

Brown, who died in his home town of Chicago on Sunday at age 78, was an optimist -- and a realist, knowing that any social progress was hard-won. The first of his songs to be recorded, by gospel legend Mahalia Jackson, was "Brown Baby." Jackson sang it with quiet majesty, but when Brown recorded it later, it was a soft-spun lullaby of aspiration, not only for Oscar Brown III but for all black babies: "I want you to live by the justice code, I want you to walk down freedom's road / Brown baby, it makes me glad that you will have things I have never had / When out of men's hearts all the hate is hurled, you're gonna live in a better world."

He also captured the wondrous energy of childhood in "Maggie," gleefully recounting that "to bounce my baby on my knee / To see her smiling back at me / Makes living sweet as it can be." Brown ended the song insisting, "Who's Who may never know my name / And not much money can I claim / But I'm important just the same to Little Maggie."

In truth, Oscar Brown Jr. was important to a lot of people. An upcoming documentary about him is titled "Music Is My Life, Politics My Mistress," and truth is, there was no division in the best of his work, including the horrifying "Bid 'Em In," in which Brown evoked the singsong call of an auctioneer selling off a female slave, often embodied onstage by Brown's wife and frequent singing partner, Jean Pace.

I'm looking for four. And $400, she's a bargain for sure

Four is the bid, 450, five; $500 now look alive

Bid 'em in; get 'em in. Don't mind them tears, that's one of her tricks

Five-fifty's the bid, and who'll say six?

She's healthy and strong and well-equipped

 Make a fine lady's maid when she's properly whipped

The search for social justice that proved a continuing thread in Brown's work was hardly surprising -- his father was a lawyer and political activist. But in college, Brown immersed himself in poetry -- British bards Shakespeare, Keats and Shelley and the great black poets Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen -- as well as musical theater, from classic Broadway composers to the political cabaret of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. He'd also be influenced by the left-leaning folk revival of the late '50s and early '60s.

Brown was a family friend of fellow South Side resident Lorraine Hansberry, whose "Raisin in the Sun" had a pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago; Hansberry's husband owned a music publishing firm and was the one who brought "Brown Baby" to Jackson. A composer's demo for those sessions led to Brown being signed by Columbia, and early on he made a name for himself adding lyrics to jazz hits like Nat Adderley's "Work Song," Miles Davis's "All Blues," Mongo Santamaria's "Afro Blue" and Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer."

The writer drew from black culture for narratives like "Signifyin' Monkey" and "The Snake," crafted such civil rights anthems as "Opportunity Please Knock" and "We Insist! Freedom Now," a 1960 jazz suite written with Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, and voiced compassion for his community in "Brother, Where Are You?" and "Children Having Children." Brown's songs were recorded by the likes of Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell, Tony Bennett and Ricki Lee Jones, but no one ever did them better than their author.

One particular audience favorite found Brown wryly reporting on a series of romantic and financial setbacks, all the while insisting he maintained the upper hand:

I've always lived by this golden rule: Whatever happens, don't blow your cool

You've got to have nerves of steel, and never show folks how you honestly feel

I've lived my whole life this way. For example, take yesterday

I breezed home happy, bringing her my pay

Her note read, "So long, Sappy, I have run away"

I threw myself down across our empty bed, and this is what I said --

And here, Oscar Brown Jr. would break into the most pitiful dramatic sobbing, before delivering his coda:

But I was cool.

That he was.


https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/oscarbrownjr
 Oscar Brown Jr.

• Biography
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As a performer, he acted his songs more than he sang them; as a songwriter, he drew as much from gospel, the blues and folk music as he did from jazz. He preferred to call himself an entertainer, although even that broad term didnotgo far enough: he saw his art as a way to celebrate African-American life andattack racism, and it was not always easy to tell where the entertainer ended and the activist began.

His song “Brown Baby,” recorded by Mahalia Jackson and others, was both a lullaby for his infant son and an anthem of racial pride. Other songs, like “Signifying Monkey” and “The Snake,” took their story lines from black folklore. The album, “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite,” for which Mr. Brown wrote lyrics to the drummer Max Roach's music, was one of the first jazz works to address the civil rights movement. His commitment to art as a tool for social change was most evident in the numerous stage shows he wrote and directed in his hometown Chicago.

Oscar Cicero Brown, Jr. made his earthly debut on October 10, 1926 at Chicago ’s Provident Hospital as the firstborn child of school teacher, Helen Lawrence and Oscar C. Brown, Sr., a prominent lawyer and real estate owner. Oscar was raised in a two-church house hold: his mother attended St. Edmond’s Episcopal Church, and his father was a member, and attorney for Pilgrim Baptist Church for over fifty years. Oscar Jr.’s verbal skills stood out early in his academic career as evidenced by thefact that he often took first-place in “elocution” contests. He attended Willard Elementary and Englewood High Schools, and by age 15, he had launched his professional career in Studs Terkel's children's radio series, called “ Secret City .” His father, however, encouraged him to pursue a college career and study law, with the hope that he would take over the family business.

As a result of two “double promotions” in elementary school, he was only sixteen years old when enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in the fall of 1943. After attending several colleges and universities, including Lincoln University (Pa.) and the University of Michigan, where he excelled in English composition, but failed everything else, it became clear that creative writing was his primary interest, rather than academic study or the business world.

In his twenties, he returned to work in radio, spending five years as the “world’s firstNegro newscaster,” for a Chicago program called “Negro Newsfront,” where he also managed to include a musical menu, as well as poetic works by Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes. In addition to his media work, he continued to dabble in real estate, advertising, and public relations; but he soon turned to activism”both inside and outside electoral politics. One of his first jobs along these lines was as program director for the progressive United Packinghouse Workers union. Activism was part of his father’s legacy”Oscar Sr. had served at the helm of the Chicago NAACP, but had also been part of a nationalist effort to develop a 49 th state for African Americans. In 1948, Oscar ran for the Illinois legislature on the Progressive Party ticket, and for the U.S. Congress as a Republican in 1952”a party he conveniently selected in order to get on the ballot. Oscar was actually a member of the Communist Party from the time he was 20, to his resignation in 1956 at the age of 30, when he concluded that he was “just too black to be red.” From 1948 to 1950, Oscar played a key role in Richard Durham’s “Destination Freedom” Black Radio Days series. He then went on to serve two years in the Army, after which he began to pursue his hobby of composing songs by singing a little in local nightspots.

The turning point in his career came around 1960. The Brown family were neighbors of the award-winning playwright, Lorraine Hansberry’s family. When “A Raisin in the Sun” debuted in Chicago before it’s New York premier, Oscar met Hansberry ’s husband, Robert Nemiroff, who worked for a New York based music publishing company. Nemiroff in turn introduced Oscar’s music to New York , which led to a recording contract with Columbia records and the classic recording, “Sin and Soul,” the debut album that made Oscar Brown Jr. a national celebrity.

The Los Angeles Times described it as “a mosaic of poetic and musical images [with] lyrics for such popular jazz instrumentals as Nat Adderley's “Work Song,” Bobby Timmons' soul jazz tune “Dat Dere” and Mongo Santamaria's “Afro Blue”; as well as “the socially charged “Bid 'Em In,” a vivid re-creation of an auctioneer's call of a female slave sale; and the lullaby “Brown Baby,” written for his newborn son, and recorded by such giants as Mahalia Jackson, and Lena Horne.

Oscar went on to perform at such venues as the Village Vanguard, and tour with Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley; composed the lyrics for the Davis classic, “All Blues,” and collaborated with Max Roach on the landmark civil rights composition, the “Freedom Now Suite.” His magnum opus came in 1961, with the production of “Kicks & Company,” directed by Hansberry, and co-produced by Nemiroff. Backer s’ auditions and fundraising activity reached a new level when Oscar Brown. Jr. made an unprecedented two hour appearance on the NBC’s “Today Show,” at the invitation of host Dave Garroway and subsequently raised over $400,000. OBJ was on his way, but sudden found it necessary to stage a “comeback” when the show “Kicks & Company” closed shortly after it previewed, in Chicago ’s McCormick Place in 1961. He didn’t ponder the circumstances but instead focused on appearances with jazz royalty earned him great critical acclaim from coast to coast.

His one man show, “Oscar Brown Jr. Entertains,” in London two years later, resulted in his being hailed: “a musical genius,” “the high priest of hip,” and “all the great ones rolled into one.” Before leaving for England , Brown hosted a television series “Jazz Scene USA,” taped in Los Angeles, where he met singer/dancer Jean Pace —ultimately to become his wife.

Oscar’s production of “Joy ‘66” brought the couple to Chicago , where within a year, they developed three more musicals entitled “Summer in the City,” “Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow [with Phil Cohran],” and “Opportunity Please Knock.” “Opportunity Please Knock” was produced in 1967 in conjunction with a youth gang known as the Blackstone Rangers, and gained national recognition when gang members appeared on the Smothers Brothers CBS television show. Their work with the gang resulted in thepair being invited in 1968 by newly elected Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary , Indiana,to conduct a summer project with young talent in that city. Among their “discoveries” were The Jackson Five, and actor/singer Avery Brooks.

Brown and Pace moved to San Francisco the following year where Oscar turned the comedy production “Big Time Buck White” into a musical, which ran successfully in the Bay area, before coming briefly to Broadway where it featured Muhammad Ali in the title role. Meanwhile, Brown and Pace had joined with Brazilian musicians Luiz Henrique and Sivuca in the production of “Joy 69,” which ran over a year in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago . The next decade found Oscar Brown Jr. as an artist-in-residence directing his works at Howard University in Washington , D.C. , Hunter College in New York and Malcolm X College in Chicago .

In the early 1970s, Brown premiered a musical drama in Washington, DC, that was underwritten by Howard University, entitled “Slave Song,” written in iambic pentameter and rhymed quatrains. By 1975, Brown had recorded 10 albums, and re-staged and starred in the hit production “Evolution of the Blues” in San Francisco .

Later that year, Oscar was featured in a (CBS) WBBM-TV special, “Oscar Brown is Back” in Town,” which won him two local Emmy Awards. Later Oscar hosted the 13-week PBS program “From Jump Street : The Story of Black Music,” and was a regular actor on the television series, “ Brewster Place ,” starring Oprah Winfrey. He appeared in several other acting roles, including episodes of “Roc” and the PBS special “Zora Is My Name,” written by Ruby Dee. Oscar Brown Jr. has composed over a thousand songs and more than a dozen full-length theater pieces. After an absence of 20 years from the recording scene, Oscar’s first CD, “ Then and Now,” was released in 1995 on the Weasel Disc label.

More recently, in 1996, “Sin and Soul . . . And Then Some,” his original Columbia recording was re-released as a CD, with five new songs. A compilation of all Mr. Brown’s Columbia releases was released recently in Europe , entitled: “Kicks: the Best of Oscar Brown, Jr.” that includes his classic collaboration with Gwendolyn Brooks on her poem, “Elegy for A Plain Black Boy.” Two of his seven children grew to become performers, with whom he regularly worked until his son, Oscar “Bobo” Brown III, an accomplished bassist, vocalist, and composer, died in a tragic automobile accident on August 12, 1996, at the age of 39.

In April 2001, he and his daughter Maggie made a live concert recording at the Hot House in Chicago resulting in a full-length concert disc that was released in 2002 on Mag Pie Records. A performer until the end, last October, Oscar opened “Jazz at Lincoln Center” in New York , and in March of this year, he celebrated the premier of Donnie Betts’ “Music is My Life, Politics My Mistress,” a documentary film about hislife at the Pan African Film Festival and performed on the Tavis Smiley Show on PBS.

He also made several appearances on hip-hop impressario Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam on HBO and had recently revived his production of “Great Nitty Gritty,” a show about gang violence that he had first staged 20 years earlier with young residents of the Cabrini Green housing project. Oscar served as Regents Professor at the University of California at Riverside , and rendered a “command performance” for the California State Legislature, who honored him with a statewide “Oscar Brown Jr. Day” tribute.

Likewise, Mr. Brown reigned as the 2002 “Senior of the Year” for his hometown, Chicago. Oscar Brown, Jr. actor, director, playwright, songwriter, lyricist, activist, essayist, and television host, called “the High Priest of Hip and the Grandpap of Rap” was a man of such eclectic talents that jazz critic Leonard Feather called him “the most hyphenated figure in show business.” He departed this life on May 29, 2005 in Chicago . Peter Keepnews stated in the New York Times obituary that: Mr. Brown was most often described as a jazz singer, and he initially achieved fame by putting lyrics to well-known jazz instrumentals like Miles Davis's “All Blues” and Mongo Santamaria's “Afro Blue,” but efforts to categorize him usually failed.

Source: James Nadal


https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/jun/01/guardianobituaries.jazz

Oscar Brown Jr

Politically committed jazz entertainer who put the message in his music

by John Fordham
7 September 2005 
The Guardian (UK)

The singer-poet Oscar Brown Jr, who has died of complications of a blood infection aged 78, was a vocalist whose technique was steeped in jazzy agility and swing, but whose talents were too diverse to allow him to slot conveniently into the "jazz vocalist" category alone. His performances were consistently witty, shrewd, musical and humane, and he wrote lyrics to several classic jazz anthems that sounded integral to them, rather than afterthoughts.

He was also a trenchant observer of hypocrisies and injustices, with a history of intelligent combativeness about citizens' rights - artists' or otherwise - that did not always go down well with the music industry.

He never committed himself so completely to the jazz life as to build a distinct reputation there, and after his success in the 1960s he increasingly tended to be overlooked by the media and the cognoscenti. Yet he continued his live shows until recently, and these often led surprised observers to comment on the injustice of his comparative obscurity.

Brown liked his programmes to have a thematic shape, sometimes devoting a show to the music of his hometown of Chicago, or to where he was performing. On his 75th birthday in Los Angeles, with ageing as his theme, he remarked to the audience: "I'm not so much celebrating it as I am grimly observing it." Yet for those who witnessed it, his performance was still full of an energy, compassion and optimism that testified to his still-flowering gifts, and to the rhythmic momentum he had always drawn from jazz.

A Brown set would include his hit songs - The Snake, or the hypocrisy-puncturing Signifyin' Monkey - but there would be plenty of space for landmarks of jazz composing, like Charlie Parker's Now's The Time or Billie's Bounce, Thelonious Monk's Round Midnight or the Miles Davis classic, All Blues. Brown's lyrics for the last count among his most popular achievements.

Brown was the son of Oscar Brown Sr, a successful lawyer and property broker - who wanted his son to follow the same career path - on Chicago's South Side. He played his first professional gig as a singer on the national radio series, Secret City, when he was 15. He served two years in the US army, and, from only 21, spent five years hosting Negro Newsfront, the first black radio news programme in the country.In the immediate postwar period, with racial prejudice still endemic in the US, Brown wanted to take a bigger step towards making a difference. He ran, unsuccessfully, for the Illinois state legislature in 1948 and, in 1952, contested a Republican congressional primary. He was also a member of the Communist party for a time, and was accused within it of "negro nationalism". Singing and songwriting were still, primarily, his hobbies.

Then in 1958, he attended the opening of Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin In The Sun, about a poor black family living on the South Side of Chicago. He met Hansberry's husband, the New York music publisher Robert Nemiroff, a record deal followed and, by 1960, he was working with bop drummer Max Roach on We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, a landmark session of the civil rights era, and on his own album, Sin And Soul.

He launched Sin And Soul in 1960 with a season at New York's Village Vanguard, and made headlines. Years of song and scriptwriting, guided by intuition and political impatience, had given him a wealth of powerful and engaging material.

Brown and Nemiroff also collaborated on the former's musical Kicks & Co, a project admired by the likes of Martin Luther King and Eleanor Roosevelt. It previewed in Chicago in 1961, but never got to Broadway, though, in 1960, NBC's Today Show gave Brown a two-hour special, focused on it.

Brown found himself singing Brown Baby as news was breaking about a school bombing in Alabama. A flood of letters followed, and Brown said later that the moment had convinced him that the sharing of emotions through music could have political repercussions he had underestimated. He was coming closer to adopting the critical, but healing, role pioneered by his most significant political and artistic guide, Paul Robeson.

Brown began to share bills with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley. He invented a one-man show, Oscar Brown Jr Entertains, reworking material from Kicks & Co, and, attracting press accolades like the "high priest of hip", in 1962 introduced the Jazz Scene USA television series. In 1969, on Broadway, Muhammad Ali starred in Buck White, Brown's musical adaptation of a play about a black militant. Brown played the role himself later in San Francisco.

During his career, Brown composed several hundred songs and made 11 albums. He won TV Emmy awards, hosted the 1980 public broadcasting series From Jump Street: The Story Of Black Music, and worked as a screen actor.

He consistently refused to accept the received wisdom that radical politics and sophisticated, ambiguous art could not be joined. He fought to move such material from the world of trade-union fundraisers and obscure independent recordings on to big stages and big labels. He never sidelined his devotion to music for the sake of an agenda. His art was admired by some of the biggest stars in jazz, and his musicianship made friends of enemies.

He is survived by his wife Jean Pace, four daughters and a son.

· Oscar Brown Jr, singer, songwriter, playwright and actor, born October 10 1926; died May 29 2005


http://articles.latimes.com/2005/may/31/local/me-brown31

Obituaries

Oscar Brown Jr., 78; Portrayed Black Culture in Music, Poetry and Theater

May 31, 2005
by Jon Thurber 
Times Staff Writer

Oscar Brown Jr., a singer and songwriter whose work reflected the humor and hard truths of the black experience in America, has died. He was 78.

Brown died of respiratory failure Sunday at St. Joseph's Hospital in Chicago, said his daughter, Maggie Brown. She said her father was admitted to the hospital May 5 with a bacterial infection and underwent extensive surgery May 16 to try to stem the infection, but his condition deteriorated rapidly.

The multitalented Brown was a poet, actor and activist as well as a musician. In a New York Times interview some years ago, he said he set out to "deliberately present the culture in which I'd grown up. I wanted to present a picture of black culture to anyone who could hear it."

And he did just that in his songs, plays and musicals, which offered a strong sociopolitical point of view.

Released in 1960, his first album, "Sin & Soul ... and Then Some" on Columbia, was a hit. A mosaic of poetic and musical images, the album included his lyrics for such popular jazz instrumentals as Nat Adderley's "Work Song," Bobby Timmons' soul jazz tune "Dat Dere" and Mongo Santamaria's "Afro Blue."

It also included the socially charged "Bid 'Em In," a vivid re-creation of an auctioneer's call at a female slave sale. The album is still considered a classic by critics and aficionados.

In his hometown of Chicago, Brown was known in the 1960s for his theatrical works that offered vivid impressions of urban life. In one instance, he helped quell gang violence in the city by employing members of the notorious Mighty Blackstone Rangers in the revue "Opportunity Please Knock." He also created the musical version of "Big Time Buck White," which starred Muhammad Ali and had a brief run on Broadway.

Other theatrical works created during that time included "Kicks & Co.," which was featured by host Dave Garroway on an entire segment of the "Today" show in what was in effect a backers' audition. The musical had a short run on Broadway.

In the early 1970s, Brown premiered a musical drama, "Slave Song," written in iambic pentameter and rhymed quatrains. Underwritten by Howard University, it had a short run in Washington, D.C.

Brown worked as an actor on such television shows as "Brewster Place," featuring Oprah Winfrey, and "Roc," starring Charles S. Dutton. Widely knowledgeable about jazz and blues, he was the host of two programs on music: "Jazz Scene USA" in 1962 and "From Jump Street: The Story of Black Music" on PBS in the 1980s.

His songwriting brought acclaim from critics and leading artists.

Playwright Lorraine Hansberry said Brown had "a startling genius for rendering sense and nonsense into acutely succinct and brilliant summaries of life as we live it."

Critic Nat Hentoff said, "Here, finally, is a performer and writer who is so authentically hip that he never overstates his authority."

But Brown's work may have been too hip and authoritative for the music business. His albums never found a broad crossover audience and by the mid-1970s he was without a music contract. His career had gained new interest in the 1990s after Rickie Lee Jones covered "Dat Dere." In 1994, he recorded his first album in almost 20 years, "Then and Now," for Weasel Disc records.

For much of Brown's career, critics lauded his work and lamented his lack of popular recognition.

"He was a very riveting performer who could write about contemporary issues with a lot of bite and wit," Hentoff told the Los Angeles Times on Sunday. "I was always surprised that he never got the acclaim he deserved."

Writing in The Times in 2002, critic Don Heckman offered similar thoughts: "Every time Oscar Brown Jr. shows up in Los Angeles to deliver one of his inspired performances, I'm mystified about why he does not receive wider recognition."

The son of a lawyer and onetime head of the local National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, Brown was born in Chicago on Oct. 10, 1926. While in high school, he appeared on Studs Terkel's children's radio series, "Secret City," but did not immediately launch an entertainment career.

From the early 1940s to the early '50s, he attended several colleges and worked in a variety of jobs, including advertising copywriter, real estate agent and publicist. He ran unsuccessfully for the Illinois General Assembly on the Progressive ticket in 1948 and was the host of one of Chicago's first televised newscasts aimed at a black audience. He ran for Congress in 1952 and lost.

After all that, he spent two years in the Army. Although he had written poetry and songs over the years, he turned to professional songwriting only after his discharge in 1956.

His first recorded composition was "Brown Baby," written after the birth of his son, and recorded by Mahalia Jackson, Diahann Carroll and Lena Horne, among others.

In 1960, he collaborated with drummer Max Roach on "We Insist! Freedom Now Suite." The same year, he was signed to a recording contract with Columbia.

He wrote more than 500 songs and added lyrics to such jazz favorites as the Miles Davis composition "All Blues."

For much of his performing career, Brown worked with his wife, singer Jean Pace Brown, who survives him. In addition to his daughter Maggie, who also performed with her father, Brown is survived by daughters Africa Pace Brown, Iantha Brown Case and Donna Brown Cane.

He is also survived by 16 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. His son, Oscar Brown III, a bassist who performed with his father in the 1980s, died in 1996.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/arts/music/oscar-brown-jr-entertainer-and-social-activist-dies-at-78.html
 
Music

Oscar Brown Jr., Entertainer and Social Activist, Dies at 78
by PETER KEEPNEWS
MAY 31, 2005 
New York Times

Oscar Brown Jr., a singer, songwriter, playwright and actor known for his distinctive blend of show-business savvy and social consciousness, died on Sunday in a Chicago hospital. He was 78 and lived in Chicago.

The cause was complications of a blood infection, his family said.

Mr. Brown was most often described as a jazz singer, and he initially achieved fame by putting lyrics to well-known jazz instrumentals like Miles Davis's "All Blues" and Mongo Santamaria's "Afro Blue," but efforts to categorize him usually failed. As a performer, he acted his songs more than he sang them; as a songwriter, he drew as much from gospel, the blues and folk music as he did from jazz. He preferred to call himself an entertainer, although even that broad term did not go far enough: he saw his art as a way to celebrate African-American life and attack racism, and it was not always easy to tell where the entertainer ended and the activist began.

His song "Brown Baby," recorded by Mahalia Jackson and others, was both a lullaby for his infant son and an anthem of racial pride. Other songs, like "Signifying Monkey" and "The Snake," took their story lines from black folklore. The album "We Insist! Freedom Now Suite," for which Mr. Brown wrote lyrics to the drummer Max Roach's music, was one of the first jazz works to address the civil rights movement.

His commitment to art as a tool for change was most evident in the numerous stage shows he wrote and directed in his native Chicago, which addressed social issues and often had poor black teenagers in their casts. The most famous of these shows, "Opportunity, Please Knock," was created in 1967 with members of the Blackstone Rangers, a street gang. His most recent production was a 2002 revival of "Great Nitty Gritty," a show about gang violence that he had first staged 20 years earlier with young residents of the Cabrini Green housing project.

Oscar Brown Jr. was born in Chicago on Oct. 10, 1926. His performing career began early: he acted in radio dramas as a teenager and was the host of a local radio program called "Negro Newsfront" while still in his 20's. But he did not become actively involved in music until after he had worked briefly for his father's real estate business, run unsuccessfully for public office twice, and served a two-year Army hitch.

After a few lean years as a songwriter, he was signed by Columbia Records as a singer in 1960. Things happened quickly after that: his first album, "Sin and Soul," was released to critical acclaim, and in 1961 he made a triumphant debut at the Village Vanguard in New York and presented excerpts from "Kicks & Co.," a musical for which he wrote the book, music and lyrics, on the "Today" show. "Kicks & Co." never made it to Broadway, closing a few days into its Chicago tryout that fall. But Mr. Brown did reach Broadway in 1969 when Muhammad Ali starred in "Buck White," his musical adaptation of "Big Time Buck White," Joseph Dolan Tuotti's play about a black militant leader. (Mr. Brown himself starred in a San Francisco production.)

Mr. Brown's career never reached the heights some had predicted for it, but he remained a cultural force in Chicago. He also continued to tour occasionally, often in musical revues that he wrote, most of which also featured his wife, the singer and dancer Jean Pace Brown. She survives him, as do a son, Napoleon; four daughters, Maggie Brown, Donna Brown Kane, Iantha Casen and Africa Pace Brown; 16 grandchildren, and 4 great-grandchildren. His son Oscar Brown III, a bass player, died in an automobile accident in 1996.

In addition to his other activities, Mr. Brown made several noteworthy television appearances over the years. He was the host of "Jazz Scene U.S.A.," a syndicated series produced by Steve Allen in 1962, and "From Jumpstreet," a 13-week PBS series that examined the history of black music in 1980. In 1990 he was a regular on "Brewster Place," a dramatic series on ABC that starred Oprah Winfrey, and two years later he had a recurring role as a jazz pianist on the Fox sitcom "Roc."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1548819

A Conversation with Entertainer Oscar Brown Jr.

December 15, 2003

 

Heard on The Tavis Smiley Show

NPR's Tony Cox sits down with entertainer Oscar Brown Jr. to talk about Brown's long career and the mystery of song writing. Plus, Brown shares some poetry.

Related NPR Stories

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Featured Artist

Oscar Brown, Jr.

• Artist and Activist Oscar Brown Jr., Dead at 78
• Oscar Brown: 'Bid 'Em In'
• A Conversation with Entertainer Oscar Brown Jr.

 
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A Conversation with Entertainer Oscar Brown Jr.

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December 15, 2003

Heard on  The Tavis Smiley Show

NPR's Tony Cox sits down with entertainer Oscar Brown Jr. to talk about Brown's long career and the mystery of song writing. Plus, Brown shares some poetry.

Related NPR Stories

More NPR Music Coverage

Featured Artist
Oscar Brown, Jr.

Artist and Activist Oscar Brown Jr., Dead at 78
Oscar Brown: 'Bid 'Em In'