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- What is your profession?
- songwriter, singer, producer, writer, journalist, poet, actor, listener
- How did you find out about TGJN?
- TGJN
- About Me:
- 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 the fact 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 first Negro 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 the pair 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 his life 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.
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 social change was most evident in the numerous stage shows he wrote and directed in his hometown Chicago .
Oscar Brown, Jr. was preceded in death by his sister Helen Brown Hudson ; and he is survived by his wife, Jean Pace Brown of Chicago; his son Napoleon Brown; his daughters, Donna Brown Kane of Atlanta, Iantha Casen of Maryland, Maggie Brown Blakey, and Africa Pace Brown of Chicago; along with 17 grandchildren and four great grandchildren.
- Website:
- http://www.oscarbrown.com
About
The thing that is making jazz healthy today is that people are coming out of other backgrounds - from rock, folk, from ethnic music. It's changing the music, and for the better.~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Billy Taylor
Dear Tamm E:
Just a note to tell you that it is nice to read about you!!!
You share so much great info about others and about the music, but nice to know that you are WAILIN' yourself and getting appreciation!!
Global Jazz Network is a really important way for all of us to keep hooked up and informed and to SLOWLY BUT SURELY SPREAD THE MESSAGE AND THE PHILOSOPHY of what Jazz is in its many different forms and what the styles are/is all about.
Just played for Paquito's honoring and received gold medal
John Faddis, save Brubeck, James moody and a bunch of KILLER YOUNG players and we all played and spoke about Paquito and jazz and all fine music
and Roberta Gamborini, who was excellent.
wish you had been there!
Through you, Donald Harrison hooked me up with Pittsburgh Jazz info and I feel like i am living there just reading about all the great happenings.
As Fall is here, I am back to my normal insane schedule, but wanted to write you back BEFORE The STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS goes into effect. I am my own secretary, so I am dedicated but SLOW!
And I can't fire myself as my own secretary or I might get hit with an Age Discrimination Lawsuit (in case I decided to sue myself for clerical incompetence).
As of this moment, a new documentary film is being made about me, to be released a few months after my 80th birthday, which is coming up next year Nov. 17, 2010. (12 months from now).
The film will end with the videoing of the big 80th birthday bash at Symphony Space in NYC and then have snippets of films from the past, with all kinds of fun stuff from the 50's thru today.
It will be called "David Amram: The First 80 Years"
Fortunately, I don't have to edit the hundreds of hours of footage or do new music the score, since the film maker, Larry Kraman is also the founder of Newport Classics recordings and knows all my symphonic as well as operatic, theater, film and jazz and world music work, so I am in good hands!!
The same people at Newport Classics Recordings are also making a Spoken Word series for I-Tunes, with me reading from my three books Vibrations, Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac and Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat.
And they are also recording some of my chamber music compositions and a new jazz record,
Next Spring my opera "12th Night", with libretto by Joe Papp (all words of Shakespeare), is having its eighth production and being FILMED!! Even most dead composers aren't that lucky!!!
This last five weeks I have appeared all over the country at concerts of my music, conducting and playing, doing spoken word with music, jazz, folk and world music festivals, film festivals and readings from my books.
Just the first week of October, I played Lowell Celebrates Kerouac festival in Lowell Mass, then the at midnight , following my last concert there , drove all night to Lagaurda Airport to catch the early Sunday mornng flight for the annual Farm Aid Concert in St Louis, where i played with Willie Nelson's band. The next morning (Monday the 5th , I flew bck to NYC in tme for my monthly concert at Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village.
The next night (Tuesday the 6th) the memorial at Symphony Space for Frank Mccourt, and the next day Wednesday the 7th) the celebration of the new authorized biography of Thelonious Monk with members of his family and musicians I have known since I first arrived in NYC in 1955!!
The 11th i flew off to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates,( i got at least get a few hours sleep) and tried to catch up on over 200 e-mails during the 13 hour flight, before arriving there and performing a concert of global music in conjunction with the score I composed for Teri McLuhan's new documentary feature film The Frontier Ghandi.
Then back in the USA in time to do programs centered around a performance of my Saxophone concerto Ode to Lord Buckley, in Loudoun Virginia ..
Then I went off to Toronto Nov 1st for a concert and appearance at the Diaspora Film Festival .
Now i am back at home hiding out composing and writing!
I am starting my fourth book "David Amram: The First 80 Years", (the same name as the new doc film being made about me), which will be finished at the end of next year and will end, like the film, with the monstro birthday bash concert for my Big 80... 12 months from now....(Nov 17 2010) in New York.
And every day, still finding time to continue composing a new orchestral work, having been doing it while on the run, and now every minute when I can hide out at the Farm in between travels.
And performing whenever possible with my three kids, each of whom have their own bands.
So as the BIG 80 approaches twelve months from now, (2010) while I may be still shy, I am not yet the retiring type.
Most of my ever-changing my schedule info. when i can get my elderly secretary (unfortunately myself) to type it up, is posted on my web page www.davidamram.com under Upcoming Events.
And my e-mail amramdavid@aol.com is always the best way to reach me as I carry my laptop with me everywhere, and Facebook, MySpace, etc., is hard to deal with and not always reliable!
You might find it fun to access an old performance of my 1971 Rondo a la Turca on the Internet for FREE!!!
The person who is conducting the Chicago Symphony and playing the middle eastern flute (who looks like my grandson) is actually a much younger looking me in 1977, recording for a PBS network TV show about my music. Pepper Adams and Jerry Dodgion are also playing.
In 1977, most of members of the Chicago Symphony who appear on the recording of this performance had never heard, much less ever played, very much music from the Middle East, and since I write everything out on paper accurately to indicate the way it should be played, that's what they were playing, and they actually began to sound like the Radio Beirut Orchestra, and suddenly as the piece went on, they started feeling something different than they had ever felt before, as they played.
It is really fun to watch their faces as they started getting ingo the old time magical groove that Middle eastern music creates and takes you into.
During the first few minutes of the piece, you can see the musicians all playing up a storm but looking as if they were thinking that I was an alien from another planet in outer space, and had brought some extra terrestrial music with me for them to play.
And then as the piece progresses, you can see, as well as hear, that by the end of the piece, the idiom of this music got them excited enough to be actually enjoying playing it!!
And playing it really well!
That's what music, like film, novels, poetry, painting, dance, language and good HOME COOKING does for all of us.
It takes you to that place from where it comes, and makes you feel that you now have a new home in a new part of the world.
I send cheers from that endless road and wish you joy and energy for all you do
David
I was just saying that you knocked this out of the park with TGJN. We have needed something like this for so long and I am telling my friends about this. I said that it is sort of like a myspace for jazz but it is actually so much more. This is real. The people here truly love jazz and we know people like that are not your average people.
I have felt for a long time that straight-ahead jazz has been slipping away from us. I have hope now that there will be a resurgence (or shall I say an insurgency:-) to bring this baby back full force!
You just knocked it out of the park. Thanks again.
xoxo,
Janie
Music
Events
-
Mel Brown Quartet
March 25, 2009 at 8pm to March 27, 2013 at 11pm – Jimmy Mak's
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New CD release
December 14, 2009 at 1pm to January 1, 2010 at 1pm – My Website
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Lezlie Harrison and Saul Rubin Two-gether
December 28, 2009 from 12pm to 9pm – The Zinc Bar
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THE LADIES SOCIAL CLUB-New Year's Eve Party!
December 31, 2009 at 7:30pm to January 1, 2010 at 1:30am – Clarion Hotel
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BACK ALLEY PLAYERS@NUYORICAN POETS CAFE
January 2, 2010 from 9pm to 11pm – NUYORICAN POETS CAFE
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BACK ALLEY PLAYERS@NUYORICAN POETS CAFE
January 2, 2010 from 9pm to 11pm – NUYORICAN POETS CAFE
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Tish Oney - The Peggy Lee Project
January 8, 2010 from 9:45pm to 11pm – The Metropolitan Room
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Tish Oney
January 9, 2010 from 7:15pm to 7:30pm – Hilton Hotel - New York Suite
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Tish Oney - The Peggy Lee Project
January 9, 2010 from 10pm to 10:15pm – Hilton Hotel - Beekman Suite
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It's truely an honor to meet you. Thanks for your many contributions to Jazz. Hope you enjoy my art.
I am humbled at the wonder of just sitting here drinking "Black Coffee" Tamm E. Hunt's version and talking to you as if I did this every Saturday morning. But ever since I heard Mahalia Jackson sing your "BROWN BABY" and the reality is that I had my precious daughter at 7:43 a.m. this morning - 38 years ago, I felt I had to connect with you in the joy and wonder of the bittersweet tapestry your lyrics have created on this wonderful journey called life and now on the Global Jazz Network.
Thank you for listening. Don't Explain.
Grange Lady Haig Rutan - Author
Death of a Bebop Wife
Cadence Jazz Books
www.ladyhaig.com
Thanks for the invite. I'm a big fan, love your music. Much respect, Peace.
Thanks for including me as a friend.
I've been a long time fan of your music and lyrics.
All the best with huge respect,
Paul Metzke