Oscar Brown, Jr (October 10, 1926 – May 29, 2005) was an American singer, songwriter, playwright, poet, civil rights activist, and actor.
He ran for office in the Illinois state legislature and U.S. Congress, unsuccessfully in each case.
Born and raised on the south side of Chicago, he was named after his father Oscar Brown, Sr., who was a successful attorney and real estate broker. His singing debut was on the radio show Secret City at age 15. Brown attended Englewood High School in Chicago, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) but did not obtain a degree. He also served a stint in the U.S. Army.
Brown's father had intended for him to follow in his footsteps and become a practicing lawyer. While he did help his father at his practice, he ventured off into other careers, such as advertising and serving in the army in the mid-1950s. When Mahalia Jackson recorded one of his songs, he began to focus on a career in music. His first major contribution to a recorded work was a collaboration with Max Roach, We Insist!, which was an early record celebrating the black freedom movement in the United States. Columbia Records signed Brown, who was already in his mid-30's and married with five children, as a solo artist. In 1960, he released his first LP, Sin and Soul, recorded from June 20 to October 23, 1960. The cover to the album included personal reviews by well-known celebrities and jazz musicians of the time, including Steve Allen, Lorraine Hansberry, Nat Hentoff, Dorothy Killgallen, Max Roach and Nina Simone (Simone would later cover his "Work Song") The album is regarded as a 'true classic' for openly tackling the experiences of African-Americans with songs such as "Bid 'Em In" and "Afro-Blue". The album is also significant because Brown's took several popular jazz instrumentals and combined them with self-penned lyrics on songs like "Dat Dere", "Afro-Blue" and "Work Song". This began a trend that would continue with several other major jazz vocalists. Jon Hendricks, for example, three years later composed lyrics for the Mongo SantamarÃa song "Yeh Yeh" (later a hit for Georgie Fame) Bob Dorough similarly composed lyrics for Mel Tormé's version of "Comin' Home Baby!" and musicians Larry Williams and Johnny "Guitar" Watson would also go on to compose lyrics for Cannonball Adderley's "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" for Marlena Shaw. Several of the tracks from Sin and Soul were embraced by the 1960s Mod movement, such as "Humdrum Blues", "Work Song" and "Watermelon Man". Brown's son, Oscar "BoBo" Brown III, was an instrumental musician who died in a car crash. His daughter, Maggie Brown, is a singer, songwriter, actress, educator and mom of three. Along with Africa Brown, these three out of seven children carry out his legacy in singing and acting.
The Sin and Soul album was followed by Between Heaven and Hell. The success of Sin and Soul meant that much more money was spent on production and Quincy Jones and Ralph Burns were bought in to handle the arrangements. "Sin and Soul" was re-released on CD in 2010 on the Superbird label.
However, Brown was soon to fall down the pecking order at Columbia following a rearrangement of the management at the company. His third album was notable for the lack of any self-composed songs, and Columbia was having a hard time packaging Brown as an artist. They were unsure whether he was suited to middle of the road/easy listening nightclubs or alternatively presented as a jazz artist.
He was given much more creative freedom for his fourth album, and he was back to his creative best, composing songs such as "The Snake", which became a Northern Soul classic when it was covered by Al Wilson, and has featured on several adverts. Despite this return to form, and having been told by the new head of Columbia that he was high on the companies' priorities, his contract at Columbia was not renewed
He founded The Oscar Brown, Jr. H.I.P. Legacy Foundation to carry on his work. But his first attempt at mounting a major musical stage show in New York City was Kicks & Co. (c. 1960). Host Dave Garroway turned over an entire broadcast of the Today show to Brown to perform numbers from the show and try to raise the necessary funds to launch it on the stage. As with virtually all of Brown's theatrical endeavors, the public was not won over sufficiently to allow financial breakeven despite acclaim by some critics. (His longest-running relative success, thanks to participation by Muhammad Ali, was Big-Time Buck White.)
Kicks & Co. is set on an all-African-American college campus in the south, during the early days of attempted desegregation. The character Mr. Kicks is an emissary of Satan sent to try to derail these efforts, in which the play's protagonist, Ernest Black, has become involved. Another notable musical show, Joy, saw two incarnations (in 1966 and 1969) and again addressed social issues of the time. Appearing with Brown were his wife, Jean Pace, and the Brazilian singer/accordionist Sivuca. RCA released the original cast recording around 1970; it is long out of print.
Brown died in Chicago, from complications of osteomyelitis in May 2005, aged 78.
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