The National Visionary Project has Brown’s biography, and a series of video interviews that are well worth watching.
Brown was the oldest of two children born to Oscar Brown and Helen Clarke Browne. Brown’s father envisioned his son as following in his footsteps as a successful South Side attorney and real estate broker. His son, however, had different aspirations. At 15, Brown acted on a regular network radio soap opera called “Secret City.” When he was 21, he was a news announcer for “Negro Newsfront,” the first daily black newscast of that time. Occasionally, he would get kicked off the air for being too controversial. In the 1950’s, Brown was drafted into the Army and began doing a lot of music composing and singing during this time. After the Army, he worked for his father’s real estate business but continued to write music.
In 1958, Brown attended the opening of “A Raisin in the Sun” and was introduced to music publisher Robert Nemiroff, the husband of playwright Lorraine Hansberry. Nemiroff was impressed with Brown’s compositions and brought him to New York to meet producer Al Ham of Columbia Records. Brown always saw himself as a writer but Ham saw him as a singer. He signed Brown to a recording contract and his first release was “Sin and Soul” in 1960. Brown was able to get an engagement at the popular Village Vanguard that opened to critical acclaim. He then began to share the bill with other jazz greats such as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane. By 1962, he was emcee on the television series, “Jazz Scene USA,” a variety/talk show that featured jazz artists.
In the late 1960’s, Brown moved to San Francisco where he produced the musical “Big Time Buck White,” a black power manifesto. The show made it to Broadway starring Muhammad Ali, who was on a government-imposed hiatus from boxing at the time. In 1967, he created “Opportunity, Please Knock,” a musical program that brought together black urban youth to showcase their creativity. The Blackstone Rangers, a notorious Chicago gang, set aside "gangbanging" to work with Brown. By the 70’s, Brown was an artist-in-residence at Howard University, Hunter College and Malcolm X College. In 1983, he hosted the PBS series, “From Jumpstreet: A Story of Black Music.” In the 90s, he had a small role on the TV show “Roc.” He is the recipient of the Muntu Theater Award, the Paul Robeson Award and was inducted into the Black Writers Hall of Fame in 2002.
In 2005, the year Brown passed on, donnie l. betts—yes, the lowercase is intentional—an actor, director, filmmaker, African American historian, and the founder of No Credits Productions, released a documentary on Brown that had been years in the making. This is the trailer.
A playful and charismatic performer, Brown is also an acclaimed jazz lyricist who worked closely with Abbey Lincoln and Nina Simone and collaborated with Max Roach and Bobby Timmons on some of the most memorable compositions of the hard bop era. Beyond his musical achievements, Brown also engaged in a parallel career as a lifelong political activist of tireless strength and unceasing moral stamina, and his entire life can be read as a parable of the civil rights and Black Power eras in the United States. His lyrics touching on every subject from human dignity and childhood wonder to marijuana and cockroaches, Brown emerges as a kind of Black Everyman.
The full documentary is currently available online, thanks to Brown’s daughters, Maggie and Africa. I was surprised to see it had very few views. I’m sure y’all can help correct that.
Almost two years ago, Brown’s daughters also teamed up to publish an essay about their dad.
He combined various musical genres, such as jazz, blues, folk, and gospel, to fashion his message of justice, and enjoyed entertaining and educating his listeners, coining the word “edutainment” to describe his approach and style. “Edutainment”—the blueprint that he designed to transform despair into hope and promise by developing the natural talents of his people—is a marked contrast to the dehumanizing lyrics and violent imagery that have become far too prevalent today. Indeed, edutainment has been tragically underutilized in the face of endemic violence flowing from within and without disenfranchised black communities.
[...]
Our father was committed to channeling his talents in an outpouring of prose, literature, and artistic expressions for what he called Human Improvement Potential (HIP), which he defined as any ideas or activities that advance the interests of humanity and involve making positive moves in healthy directions.
While greatly respected by literary contemporaries such as Lorraine Hansberry and Gwendolyn Brooks, our father may be one of the least-known Chicago writers of his era.
Without further ado, let’s dive into his music—and the musicians who celebrated it. Afro-Cuban jazz master Mongo Santamaria recorded his hit “Afro Blue” in 1959, and since then it has become a jazz instrumental standard, recorded most notably by John Coltrane.
I would argue that it was Oscar Brown, Jr.’s lyrics, also written in 1959, that lifted the tune from a standard to the sublime.
Dream of a land my soul is from
I hear a hand stroke on a drum
Shades of delight, cocoa hue
Rich as a night, Afro blue
Elegant boy, beautiful girl
Dancing for joy, delicate whirl
Shades of delight, cocoa hue
Rich as a night, Afro blue
Two young lovers are face to face
With undulating grace
They gently sway then slip away to some secluded place
Shades of delight, cocoa hue
Rich as a night, Afro blue
Whispering trees echo their sighs
Passionate pleas, tender replies
Shades of delight, cocoa hue
Rich as a night, Afro blue
Lovers on flight, upward they glide
Burst at the height, slowly subside
Shades of delight, cocoa hue
Rich as a night, Afro blue
And my slumbering fantasy
Assumes reality
Until it seems it's not a dream, the two are you and me
Shades of delight, cocoa hue
Rich as a night, Afro blue
Remember: In 1959, there were very few songs celebrating the beauty of our African heritage in an American world that had obfuscated African history, culture, and beauty, replacing it with demeaning (and incorrect) images of savagery and ignorance.
Jazz singer Abbey Lincoln, who was also deeply involved in Black politics and activism, was the first person to record Brown’s lyrics, even beating out Brown’s own version in 1960. Here’s Lincoln’s version ...
… and here’s Brown’s, which is a duet between his voice and a drum, evoking the lyric, “I hear a hand stroke on a drum.”
Contemporary artists like Dee Dee Bridgewater, Dianne Reeves, Erykah Badu, and Lizz Wright have all done wonderful takes on the song.
Bear with me and check out one more take on “Afro Blue.” Esperanza Spaulding also knocked it out of the park at the International Jazz Day Global Concert in Istanbul back in 2013. The tempo changes from both Mongo’s instrumental original and Brown’s. Particularly notable is the interplay between Grammy-award winning pianist Robert Glasper and Spalding.
Brown didn’t only write songs about the beauty of the Black experience; he also captured the essence of life in the Black community—like the call of a street vendor selling watermelon (with some sexual innuendo).
Brown also looked at the ugly racial side of our history. Given that we are currently engaged in a national debate about how we should teach Black American history, including the underbelly of enslavement that is foundational to this nation, I think every school curricula should include Brown’s “Bid ‘Em In.”
"Bid 'Em In" -- a harrowing, percussive narrative where Brown plays the part of a slave auctioneer -- has become an animated short film directed by Neal Sopata and produced by Ayappa Biddanda.
I used this video in several college courses I taught, and it had a profound impact on my students, who never really thought about slave auction blocks.
I also will never forget hearing these lyrics.
Auctioning slaves is a real high art
Bring that young gal, Roy. She's good for a start
Bid 'em in! Get 'em in!
Now here's a real good buy only about 15
Her great grandmammy was a Dahomey queen
Just look at her face, she sure ain't homely
Like Sheba in the Bible, she's black but comely
Bid 'em in!
Gonna start her at three. Can I hear three?
Step up gents. Take a good look see
Cause I know you'll want her once you've seen her
She's young and ripe. Make a darn good breeder
Bid 'em in!
She's good in the fields. She can sew and cook
Strip her down Roy, let the gentlemen look
She's full up front and ample behind
Examine her teeth if you've got a mind
Bid 'em in! Get 'em in!
What struck me immediately when I first heard this was “make a durned good breeder.” I have written in the past that “I am the product of a bicentennial of breeding farms" when talking about my own family history of enslavement, and the “other” U.S. slave trade.
On a much lighter note, Brown dipped heavily into Black American folklore, toasts, and use of parables. Dr. Henry Louis Gates explored this in his seminal text, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. Gates explores the Yoruba trickster Orisha Esu (also known in African and African diasporic religions as Elegua and Papa Legba). Brown gave us Esu as a monkey who “signifies” in song.
Another one of those parables written, sung, and recorded by Brown in 1963 was “The Snake.”
In 1968, “The Snake” became a hit single by Al Wilson. The YouTube comment section for Wilson’s version is full of Trump supporters. Why? Because someone, somewhere, sent Donald Trump a copy of the lyrics, and he has been using them to rile up his supporters at rallies—against immigrants.
Does he know who he is citing? He must by now, because for several years there have been articles written about it, and Brown’s daughters have attempted to get him to stop. Yet Trump is still using it, most recently at a rally in February in New Hampshire, where he identifies “The Snake” as a poem written by “Al Green.”
In early 2018, the Brown daughters were guests of Don Lemon when they went on CNN to talk about their efforts to get Trump to stop—and shared reasons why they don’t think Trump’s usage falls under the domain of “fair use.”
Brown’s grandson has also spoken out on social media, going back to 2016.
I think the best spiritual cure for Trump’s venom is to play, read, and listen to more Oscar Brown, Jr.
Raul da Gama—musician, writer, poet, and editor of Jazzdagama—agrees. He wrote an apology for not celebrating Brown more, and celebrating his legacy, in his “Ode to Oscar Brown Jr.” He describes a 2016 jazz concert at Lincoln Center and hearing all the names we usually associate with that art form, from Louis Armstrong to Bessie Smith, and so many in between. But then ...
That night was no different except that one name came up that we almost never remember in the mêlée of today’s very commercial-orientated music industry and that too just by chance. And that was the name: Oscar Brown Jr.
Would the stage have been set for Gil Scott-Heron, who begat The Last Poets? Would Common have had a voice? Probably, but who is willing to wager against that? At any rate there is no good reason why we should have ever left out – indeed all but forgotten – the name of Oscar Brown Jr. He changed righteous indignation into elegant protest. With “Driva’ Man”, “Freedom Day”, “All Africa”; “Work Song”, “Bid ‘Em In”, “Signifyin’ Monkey” “Dat Dere” and “Humdrum Blues”, “Afro-Blue”, and “When Malindy Sings”… Yes, Oscar Brown Jr. ‘made it known’ elegantly but with also in a brutally concrete idiom and that we’ll be hard-pressed to forget.
But then the history of Jazz and of Poetry is often learnt from books written by white writers or writers who have remembered little, or writers who equate freedom with the so-called freedom of largely white, western society. There is also no effort to change this – for if there was at least art history books would be rewritten to include some, if not all the names mentioned above. And universities would not feel the need to have a separate Department of African American Studies as curriculum would be inclusive of the history of the whole of society.
Mr. da Gama also included Brown’s remarkable Def Poetry performance of “I Apologize” from 2003. It’s that much more potent when you consider that Brown was born in 1926.
I too think of Oscar’s influence on a generation of poets like Gil Scott Heron, Nikki Giovanni, and the Last Poets, who in turn have inspired today’s young musicians and spoken-word artists who are singing out and using their words to ignite the fight against oppression.
I’ll close with this perfect quote.
Remember to regard your vote as essential to this nation’s well-being.
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