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OSCAR BROWN, Jr.
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Oscar Brown, Jr. is one of the handful of people who can be called an all around entertainer. He originally envisioned himself as a writer, but Columbia Records and a few enthusiastic jazz fans saw him as a jazz vocalist. He's appeared on the TV screen a number of times, as either a host (Jazz Scene U.S.A., From Jumpstreet) or an actor (a brief stint on Roc). Some see him as a forerunner to socially conscious black singer-songwriters like Gil Scott-Heron or Michelle N'Dege Ocello, others might remember a recent stint as curator at the DuSable Museum. The thing is, he's had his hands in so many pies, you can hardly pin him down to just one. To do that would mean excluding everything else. I spoke with him a couple times in January, and the results are here. Special thanks to Jake Austen and especially Rick Wojcik, for getting it started and filling in the gaps when needed.
OSCAR: Well, I'm a Chicagoan, I grew up in the Chicago public schools, went to Englewood High School and finished there in 1943, I went to about five or six colleges, but I'm still a freshman, I never did quite make it in the university world. However, I did get involved in performing, first in radio as an actor, and I became a newscaster, and finally I became an entertainer, as I am now‹that is, a singer, actor, and performer in various media. (When I was a newscaster) I had a program called Negro Newsfront and it was on for about five or six years from 1947, the latter part of '47, thru about 1952. It was on several stations (laughs) 'cause I used to get kicked off the air all the time for being really controversial. I started out on WJJD, which was a station that was sunup to sundown, so my starting time would change during the year, because I was early morning. Then they said they didn't have any more time for me, and I asked my listeners to send in cards and letters so I could try and get a new sponsor. I got so many cards and letters I just took a whole bushel basket full of 'em over to the Parker House sausage company and told Mr. Parker to pick a card‹any card...read these cards. He became my sponsor, and then the Baldwin Ice Cream Co. was one of my sponsors‹these were all little black businesses around. The main sponsor, however, was my father's business, the Midway Television Institute, which was a school that taught refrigeration and radio and television to veterans. Anyway, that's what that newscast was about. It went from WJJD to WVON, which was Al Benson's station, and there it had a big audience because that was a very well-listened-to station, and after that, I had big problems with them. They kicked me off the air, and I went over to WHFC, and I hung in there for a year or so doing both news and DJ work. That was kinda my early beginning.
JAMES: How did you get kicked off of WVON‹the Voice of the Negro‹doing a black-oriented talk show?
OSCAR: Well, I was very outspoken. I used to have editorial comments that would get me in hot water at the station....
JAMES: But that station could be controversial itself...
OSCAR: No, not particularly. The guy who was the station manager was a guy named Herb Rudolph‹I'll never forget him, a little redneck‹he was not by any means even liberal. I left that and went into the labor movement. I became a program coordinator for the United Packing House Workers of America, that was the organization that represented the people who work in the stockyards. In those days, Chicago was known as the "Hog Butcher Of The World", by Carl Sandburg's poetic standards. It was a very exciting job, there were 20,000 people in the district that I was representing, and my job was to conduct programs for women's rights, political actions, civil rights, farm labor relations‹the cows and pigs all came from the farms, and so we wanted the workers and the farmers to understand some of their common problems because we felt that the owners, the bosses of the packing houses, tried to pit the farmers against the workers, and tell them that "we can't pay good prices for your cattle because the workers want so much", and then they'd tell the workers the opposite‹"we can't pay you any higher wages because the farmers are demanding too much." So, my job was then to go down to these little county fairs and put up an exhibit to try to befriend the farmers. So it was really an interesting job, I did that for about five or six years, and then I got killed in a political war, in the union. I went to work for my dad in the real estate business, he had a business at 4649 Cottage Grove Avenue by this time. He'd moved from the Television Institute into this private real estate business, and I went to work up there. But, I wasn't very successful as a real estate person, I was trying to write a show called Kicks and Co. I was writing songs and I was trying to get various singers to become interested in my songs. This would be in the middle fifties into the late fifties. I guess I should back up a little bit because in the latter part of the 40's, as I got to be 21, I became very interested in politics. I joined the Communist Party, for one thing, and I ran for political office‹I ran for the state legislature on the Progressive Party ticket in 1948‹I lost‹and I ran for Congress as a Republican in 1952, at which time I also lost. I wasn't a Republican, but it was so difficult to get on the ballot as an independent that we decided, my young crew and I, that we would try and get on the ballot on the Republican Party ticket just so we could raise issues 'cause we wanted to fight the Democrats. We were really young zealots, and that went on till I got booted out of the Communist party when I was thirty years old, about 1956. It was one of those situations where "you can't fire me, I quit!"(laughs) We fell out on the race question. I was just too black to be red! (laughs) They called me a "Negro nationalist", which meant that I was very interested in the problems that befell black people, and I saw things from that perspective, which was kinda natural, 'cause that's where it was. During that period, around 1955, in order to keep me from running for office anymore, I got drafted. I was 28 years old by this time, but they put me in the Army and then kicked me out for being a Communist. McCarthy was doin' his number, I was scared to death, on the way down to Arkansas to be in the Army, I just knew I was gonna go to the stockade! However, I didn't....the Supreme Court reversed it, 'cause it was totally unethical for them to force me in and then kick me out, 'cause I didn't wanna come in the first place! And I'd taken the Fifth Amendment and all. But anyway, all of that stuff sorta faded as I was in the Army, I got to singin' in the service clubs with a fella from Chicago named Al Colletta. He and I called ourselves the Two-Tones.
JAMES: And that was your intro to showbiz?
OSCAR: Well, I was always interested in being in a show‹I was always a ham, I mean even when I was workin' for the union, if some errand carried me to a place where there was a stage I'd find myself wanderin' across the stage....I think the thing that got me goin' was songwritin'. I had been writin' songs as a hobby when I was a teenager, then I kinda got serious about it. I copyrighted some of 'em and I was thinkin' about gettin' 'em published. But finally, when my first son was born, I wrote a lullaby called "Brown Baby" and I liked that so much that I tried to get it to Harry Belafonte and I began to write more songs. I really started writin' songs just to keep from goin' crazy in the Army.
JAMES: So Harry Belafonte recorded "Brown Baby?"
OSCAR: No, no, no, Harry Belafonte didn't do shit. (laughs) No, but he encouraged me a lot because I saw him as an example, as sort of a role model, as somebody I wanted to be like. I mean, we were the same age, but he had gone into show business, he had made a hit record, he made movies, he was goin' into production, he had his own office‹this was what I really aspired to be.
JAMES: Somewhere down the line you wrote a song for a group called the Delegates, on Vee Jay, with Dee Clark ("The Convention")....
OSCAR: Yeah, how do you know about that? That really took some diggin'....that happened, sorta at that time I was writing songs, tryin' to get singers to do 'em, I wasn't tryin' too much to be a singer myself, although I said I had performed in the Army. But when I got out of the Army, I started writin' more songs, and I got fired from my job in the union. I went to work with my father in the real estate business, ostensibly‹I really wasn't doin' much real estate business, I had a license to sell real estate, but I didn't sell one building‹mostly I was upstairs, writin' songs, and by this time, I had a loft, it was my office, and I had gotten into the idea that I wanted to be a playwright, as well as a songwriter, and so the best way to do that would be to write a musical. So I started with my own musical called Kicks and Co.
JAMES: When was this?
OSCAR: This would have been about....1957.
JAMES: It appears to me that you were down with the whole theater and jazz scenes. How did you sidetrack into rock and roll with the Delegates?
OSCAR: Vivian Carter‹Vivian was the Vee, and her husband Jimmy was the Jay‹so they had this company. Vivian was on WVON while I was on WVON, so I knew them. And when I started writin' songs, it was just a question of getting songs written. I wasn't particularly‹at that time, it wasn't the way it is now...you have rock and roll and crossover and rhythm and blues and all these little differentiations with names...the pop, and the easy listening...
JAMES: It was all one world, huh?
OSCAR: Yeah, it was music! (laughs) so yeah, there was rock and roll, of course‹it had just come in...
JAMES: But it wasn't separated...
OSCAR: Well, not...it wasn't divided‹rock and roll was all of it! White people weren't even in it yet! (laughs) When they got into it, they became rock and roll and we were now rhythm and blues! But this is something that's done in boardrooms and in sales meetings. This has nothin' to do with what the creative artists are doin'.... in the clubs or in the rehearsal halls or anything else. Show business is two words, and the names which we're talkin' about usually come from the business side (laughs).
JAMES: And "The Convention" was kind of a novelty thing, where you were spoofin' the acts of the day?
OSCAR: With that particular piece, I was makin' a spoof...they were attacking rock and roll, that is the established businesses, because rock and roll messed 'em up! Up until rock and roll came along, they had the "Hit Parade", and the music was generally played on the radio that was popular was the music that was showtunes, and out of the movies, and out of a sort of white milieu. All of a sudden, it started gettin', you know, Little Richard! (laughs)
JAMES: "A-WOP-BOP-A-LU-BOP-A-WOP-BOP-BOP!"
OSCAR: Yeah! Whoa! And the whole thing began to change! (Starts imitating Richard's piano style) "Ding-ding-ding-ding......" (both of us laugh) It all just changed! And, BMI came in, the Broadcast Music Incorporated. All the music prior to that had been ASCAP music and that was showtunes and stuff. BMI started playing this black music and that began to take over. After awhile, they started squeezin' the Hit Parade out‹Snooky Lanson and all that stuff! (laughs)
JAMES: No more Patti Page!
OSCAR: Well, Patti, I think she hung in there for a while! but there...you're right‹all of that was kinda bein' eased out...or had to adapt and had to start singin' that stuff. Then, of course, in '63 here came the Beatles, and this was the first time, a situation where white guys could sound like black guys....and prove that they weren't. (laughs) They were all for that‹"oh, wow!" And then when Elvis Presley came along, same kinda thing. But always, up to that time, the music had been pretty much....
JAMES: Grouped together.
OSCAR: So, the way I got in with Vee Jay was simply because I knew Vivian and Jimmy, and I was tryin' to break into the music business and there they were. I even tried to form my own record company, Creation Records.
JAMES: Anything ever come out?
OSCAR: Yeah, we put out a record, I forgot what the name was.....
JAMES: Was it by you?
OSCAR: Yeah, it was by me...recorded down here at Universal Studios, I paid for it, had a distributor...but I didn't know beans about it, you know, I didn't have the money and you can't just do it like that, you know? So I blew maybe three, four thousand dollars of somebody else's money.
JAMES: You still have copies after all this time?
OSCAR: Heck naw.
JAMES: Do you have copies of most of your records?
OSCAR: I don't have copies of any of 'em. I don't have anything to play 'em on, I don't carry that kind of stuff around. I got to be such a gypsy, after while, that it was much more profitable to travel light, for personal and political reasons, all kinds of stuff.
JAMES: You told me you envisioned yourself as a writer. How did you make the transition to singer?
OSCAR: Well, nobody was singin' what I was writin' (laughs), so that was how that happened! When I was writing songs and I was trying to get people to sing my songs, and I was writing a musical by this time, Kicks and Co.....then A Raisin in The Sun came to town. Lorraine (Hansberry, who wrote Raisin In The Sun), her family lived across the street from where I lived. Anyhow, I went over to her house and sang some of my songs to her and read this play. Her husband, Bob Nemerol, was a songwriter, he was also in the music publishing business, with a man called Phil Rose, who produced Raisin. So I started sending my songs to Bob Demarol in NYC, for them to kick around to try to get singers to record 'em. He carried it to Columbia Records and Al Ham was interested in my performance, so they contacted me with a contract to become a singer. So I sent 'em that contract with a note saying it looked like a clever circumvention of the 13th Amendment to me and I wasn't into being a singer anyway, and what were they gonna do with me as a writer. Mitch Miller saw that and said "who needs him?" At the time, Mitch was head of Columbia's AandR. A year passed and Al called me again. I signed, they never rewrote the contract, but it did launch me into a singing career.
JAMES: So the first LP was Sin and Soul?
OSCAR: Correct.
JAMES: There's all these quotes from famous people plastered on the front cover. You had to have been getting around by this time.
OSCAR: By that time, I had written a play, I'd gone to New York, I was hooked up with Columbia Records, and then Nemerol and his partner decided that they would like to produce Kicks and Co. I'd written this play in hopes that Phil Rose was going to produce it. The three of them got into an argument about who was gonna have artistic control and they fought with Phil, and because Bob had been instrumental in my getting a recording contract, he asked me would I let him and his partner be the producer. I agreed to do that. So when I went to New York the first time to record, I had brought this play along. As the first record came out, I was involved in doing backer's auditions to raise money for the play. All this was happening simultaneously. I got my first engagement, which was at the Village Vanguard. When I was presented on the Today program, I was a sensation when I got to the Village Vanguard. They got a tremendous response from that highly successful appearance, and Dave Garroway himself was so personally impressed that he came to see me with his daughter a couple of nights later. He invited me, on the spot, in the club, to come on the Today show, and they turned over the whole two hours to a backer's audition to raise money to do Kicks and Co.
JAMES: That's a hip move.
OSCAR: It was so hip that the New York State Legislature then passed the law to make sure that that never happened again!
JAMES: It does not pay to be hip!
OSCAR: No, not in your time. (both laugh) Posthumous profits (laughs), but nothing happens concurrent with your living. But that did enable us to get enough money to put the show on, and it opened here at McCormick Place‹and closed immediately. It probably ran out of money. The budget was $400,000, but by bringing the show here to Chicago, to open, they spent, they gambled, and they thought by being successful in Chicago, hey would be able to recoup their initial 400,000 and go into New York sittin' pretty. However, the cost of flying all those people to Chicago and putting them up in hotels, and rehearsing them and finding rehearsal halls and all that depleted the money so that before we opened in Chicago, they were broke. They managed to raise enough dollars to keep on going. The critics in Chicago hated it, except for the Defender, who loved it.
JAMES: Why did the other papers hate it? I can guess, but I want to hear it from you.
OSCAR: Well, Quality Casting said it was "pelvic choreography." It was the twist, but it was before the Twist had broken out! In fact, the twist didn't break out until like two weeks after Kicks and Co., and I think that's why it broke out, in New York, 'cause it was big in the black community, but those dances didn't necessarily...
JAMES: Cross over.
OSCAR: I think somebody called it "Amateur Night In Dixie!" It was just the general prejudice......
JAMES: That's what I was thinking.
OSCAR: So the black press loved it, but the white press didn't understand it and contested it. We went to N.Y. then, and David Merrick, who was a big producer, let us take over one of his stages during the daytime to try and raise money to resurrect it but that was unsuccessful so it died.
JAMES: So how did those CBS albums do?
OSCAR: After the first two albums, Al Ham got fired and became my manager, but I was sort of a lame duck at Columbia after that. Al Ham had signed me, he loved me, I was one of his projects. Ham was really there to be my champion! And he got fired, I didn't have a champion! So, whoever inherited me, I was alright but I wasn't his, he hadn't signed me. Other acts were being signed, and those would be the ones that he would push. So while I was there with Al Ham, everything was red carpet. Once he left, it got more and more back door, and finally I was just out the door. I had just returned from London, England where I had done a sensational one-man show with terrific reviews, and I came back pissed at the record company, talking to Clive Davis, who was at that time a lawyer for them. I said, "why don't you let me out of the contract if you're not gonna support me." I couldn't even get the record in the record store next door to the theatre and I've had all these hit reviews! "All the greats rolled into one!" "Must see!" "Sammy Davis, move over!" It seemed like a month later, they dropped me from the label.
JAMES: How many LP's did you do for them? Four?
OSCAR: Four.
JAMES: And the last one would have been ...Tells It Like It Is!, right?
OSCAR; Correct. In A New Mood was the second one‹no, the third one. That was when they were trying to get me to change.
JAMES: So how did they try to make you change?
OSCAR: I was doin' "Brown Baby", "Bid 'Em In", "Signifying Monkey" (earlier). (On New Mood) I started doin' "Let My People Go"(laughs)....I was in the same old mood!
JAMES: Somewhere down the line, in this time zone, you had Jazz Scene U.S.A.....
OSCAR: Yeah, well, Al Ham...
JAMES: You owe him some favors, huh?
OSCAR; Well, I paid him...he was my manager at the time. He was looking through the trades and he saw where Steve Allen was lookin' for somebody to host a series. At that time, I had a gig comin' up in San Francisco at the Hungry i. He arranged for me to go down to L.A. from San Francisco and audition for this show.
JAMES: Was this a network TV series?
OSCAR: No, it was a syndicated show‹no network was thinkin' about jazz at that time, now we're talkin' back in '61 or '62?
JAMES: Did you have any say in who the guests were gonna be?
OSCAR: No....mostly it was John Tyner or Leonard Feather. No, I didn't have much to say about that. In the first place, I wouldn't have known who to ask anyway (laughs)....Leonard Feather gave me a "Blindfold Test" (a still-running column in Down Beat magazine where musicians, facing away from the stereo, try to identify and comment on other musicians records) and I flunked it! "Who was this?" "How the hell would I know?" I wasn't an aficionado, I was a consumer! I was very pleased with doing that show, it gave me the experience of television, it was still black and white at that time, so that was quite a while ago. I thought it was well done, and it's out now (on videotape), I saw a couple of episodes about three months ago....
JAMES: How do they hold up to you, after all this time?
OSCAR: Great! There's me, 30-40 years ago! (laughs)
JAMES: See, that's the thing‹we've been taking about how you were too far ahead of your time, but you always had exposure.....you definitely had friends in high places!
OSCAR: That's in the highest place (laughs).......somebody up there likes me!
JAMES: There were more conventional black singers than you who couldn't buy that kind of exposure.....you were doing alright!
OSCAR: I'll tell you another one.....the Today show. With Kicks and Co.? You couldn't even imagine a thing like that‹that had to be a godsend! Subsequently, whereas the thing with Jazz Scene U.S.A. was middle management lookin' out for his artist and seeing an opportunity and following through with a show called From Jumpstreet.....that was totally serendipitous! I mean, (for Jumpstreet), I had no manager, I had nobody, I was just sorta walkin' along and fell into it! So that has happened to me from time to time, I've had opportunities to disappear and look like they were right there, and all of a sudden it evaporated, and I haven't been able to understand how that is.
JAMES: I don't know if you've kept track, but a lot of people, like Johnny Rivers, Albert Collins, and whatnot have covered your songs through the years. What's your favorite?
OSCAR: I welcome 'em all.
JAMES: I singled out Rivers, because he covered a couple of your songs in the 60's.....did you ever meet him?
OSCAR: He and I started to record...he was gonna record me one time, but we had a big fallin' out because I thought he was just really after Jean, my old lady!
JAMES: Yeah?!
OSCAR: He was pullin' some....like we'd go into the studio and I'd nail one, a good take....and he'd erase it! That kinda shit was goin' down.....as I say, we were going to record, but I thought that sex got in the way of that. For Jean, that was an adventure, being with Jean Pace in the 1960's‹wooo! (laughs) A walk down Broadway was an adventure!
JAMES: So how did you hook up with her? I know she's a performer too....
OSCAR: I met her at a party at Redd Foxx's house....Redd Foxx and I used to perform together from time to time. He was living in L.A. and performing at Basin Street West and she was dancin' in the chorus line there. He invited me to his party the night of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I remember that, and I was playing in a club there called the Crescendo. After work, I went to this party about two or three blocks away‹his joint was there, and there she stood.....aw, buddy! (laughs) And that's how we met. This was during the period when I was coming out there quite frequently to do episodes of Jazz Scene U.S.A., so I was constantly in Los Angeles, performing in Los Angeles as well.
JAMES: This takes us to the mid-sixties. What were you doing, stagewise?
OSCAR: I was performing in clubs like the Troubadour in Los Angeles...I had gone to Las Vegas but they had asked me to leave, quick, because I wasn't attracting gamblers (laughs). I did the Troubadour, the Hootenanny on the West Coast, the Cafe Au Go-Go and some clubs like that in New York. In '65 I met Luiz Enrique, I was just goin' around to clubs, and I had gone to Cafe Au Go-Go, and this young Brazilian man was there playing, and he and I became good friends and started collaborating on some songs. He would sing songs in Portugese to me, or he would do something and I would do lyrics, translating them and all that...that led to our doing this album together and doing a show called Joy '66 that next year, which included Jean, and ran for several months here (in Chicago) at a club called the Happy Medium. Stagewise, that's what I was doing‹then. Once I was in Chicago, and stationed there, I began to audition other actors to do another show, so we did a second show called Summer In The City. At the same time, I commissioned Phil Cohran to write the music to Paul Laurence Dunbar's poetry, and we sold that to the Chicago Board of Education‹toured shows for about a dozen weeks. At the same time, I made contact with the Blackstone Rangers, and we began talkin' to them about some alternative activity to what they were doin', which was basically gang-bangin' and terrorizing the neighborhood. We were doing Summer In The City. The fact that there was this gang presence was bad for business and that's one of the reasons that I contacted gangs‹could we do something for them that would stop them from steppin' on my hustle! I said we'd do a show for 'em, but they said, "well, we got some talent, can we be in the show?" We wound up doin' a show called Opportunity, Please Knock, which really changed my life, basically, because it let me see that there was this enormous talent in the black community. This is where all the dances came from; this is where all the popular music comes from; so I began to really concentrate on that. Opportunity Please Knock ran for a little while, with those kids being on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
JAMES: I always thought it was bizarre that Dick Smothers had to talk about what you were doing during the song, instead of before.
OSCAR: I don't think he explained what I was doing because I don't think my name came up in that.
JAMES: Yeah, it didn't, but I remember him mentioning Opportunity Please Knock.
OSCAR: It was no explanation of Opportunity Please Knock without me because there wouldn't have been one. It wasn't something that was just...done, it had to come out of....it was a whole political thing. When I was talkin' to the Blackstone Rangers, we weren't just talkin' show business. We were talkin' politics. Why are you guys gangbanging? Why are you fighting the East Side Disciples? So we started talkin' about elections, we stated talkin' about the Red Guard in China was very dominant.....instead of you guys being the ones who are terrorizin' the community, when the old lady sees you at the corner, she should know the young warriors are here and she should feel protected and safe. So, we were trying to instill this against the process, against the whole concept of white supremacy that was on them. So, it was more than just a show, it was a political effort. We tried to get the T.W.O., for example, to donate enough money just for us to put ads in the papers 'cause we had a dynamite show‹the people were standing, cheering, in tears and all after every show. They wouldn't give us a quarter. Now Woodlawn has disappeared. The people who control the money‹Rev. Brazier and them‹they got big churches and big operations...
JAMES: Are they still around?
OSCAR: Oh yes! Highly successfully around! But the Blackstone Rangers and those young people who dwelt in that area, that looks like a war hit it, and a war did hit it. When I went to Brazier, we had the show all organized, and all we needed was they would put some ads in the paper and let the people know what these kids have done, what they can do, let the people come and see it, and we'll pay you back‹just lend us the money, this is a hot show! No, they said they couldn't put the money into anything but plumbing and carpentry and bricklaying....actually, what we did with the money was we turned it over to Jeff Fort and some of those guys and let them mess with it till they could put 'em in jail for misappropriating' public money. But anybody who knew them would know that they was gonna misappropriate the money...I took 'em over to Seaway Bank to try to teach them banking so they would have sound business principles to operate with. "I don't wanna get caught in a crossfire when you start shootin' each other‹and I know you will‹about chump change, about money I could've been makin' every week if I wasn't foolin' with you! So let's get this organized." I got them together. We used to talk, you know, really hard business. The first weekend, we made fifteen thousand bucks. A bunch of older gangsters tried to move in on the fifteen thousand dollars.
JAMES: Did they succeed?
OSCAR: No. Nope. They had opened a bank account and they were sayin' "Where's the money? Where's the money?" Jeff Fort said, "why didn't you put the money in the name of the Blackstone Rangers?" A half-a-dozen older guys who I thought were the O.G.'s of the operation, the Old Gangsters, but they weren't. They were just some cats who were tryin' to make a move on it. One of them (the older guys) made the mistake of saying, "well, what difference does it make what name we put the account in? Blackstone ain't shit." To them, that was like stompin' on the flag in front of a bunch of Marines, that just infuriated the Blackstone Rangers. And the Big Chief, Bull was his name, Gene Harriston, stood up and said, "I'm the Big Chief", pointed to Jeff Fort and said, "that's the Little Chief and these are the main 21"‹talkin' about the crowd of young men there, and then he turned to these seven or eight older guys and said, "who are you motherfuckers? This is Oscar Brown, Jr. and the Blackstones' thang." So when I left there, I was Papa Blackstone on the bus goin' back there and I had the account and it looked like we were gonna be able to do great things. Bull and I then went to the Tribune the next day, and the Daily News, and the Sun-Times, and the Chicago Defender, and told 'em, "we don't have any money but we have a dynamite show. If you'll just give us some publicity and help us, we can keep going. And they told us that the police didn't want them to say nice things about these gangsters, so they didn't even print the reviews that their own reporters had written about the show. And so we were shut out. And when that happened, the gang then reverted to their gangster stuff...I had to get the hell out of there‹Jean and I left and went to New York.
JAMES: From there, you started Joy again, with Sivuca.
OSCAR: Let me tell you something else that happened that's quite interesting. After the Blackstone Ranger thing‹during it‹Dick Hatcher was running for mayor of Gary. He had a big benefit out there, Harry Belafonte was the headliner, and I came out there with half a dozen kids from the Blackstone Rangers. When Hatcher got elected, he hired Jean and me to come to Gary to work with the youth there. He got a $75,000 government grant and put us on the payroll and said, "find the talent in Gary and start workin' with them." In order to discover the talent we had a contest. All the kids in Gary between 13-18 or something were invited to be in this contest. The winners of the contest were the Jackson Five!
JAMES: Just before Motown?
OSCAR: That's how they got to Motown! Motown would never have heard of them, because the kids who finished second were damned good too! The kids who finished third were damned good. Gary was full of talent, but their chances of gettin' that kind of exposure weren't too likely. By the time we did our little show the Jackson Five were on Motown, and they were gone. So, at the end of that year, I was hoping hat we could stay there and create a new industry because there was so much talent that instead of it just being Steeltown it seemed like it could be as much of an entertainment town as Motown was. But the governor didn't have that money for us to continue the program, and in the meanwhile, someone had become interested in a play called Big Time Buck White, and asked if I would be interested in directing it, in California. I had seen Big Time Buck White while I was in L.A., and I was so impressed with it that I had begun writing some songs about the characters. And so, when I went there, instead of just directing it, I talked him into letting me convert it into a musical, which is what happened. So in 1969, I guess it was, we went to New York and did Buck White as a musical. While I was doing that, my friend Luiz Enrique, who had been down in Brazil, had gone home to Brazil after our Joy '66 experience, he came back with half a dozen songs that he had written and I started writin' lyrics and we started talkin' about bringing Sivuca, whom we knew, into the show. He was, at that time, living in New York‹he had been performing with Miriam Makeba.
JAMES: You got back into recording around this time on Atlantic.
OSCAR: That was a result of a fellow named Joel Dorn being at Atlantic Records....he signed me to that label.
JAMES: You had a hit single with "The Lone Ranger", until it got pulled.
OSCAR: Yeah, it was on the charts with a bullet. I guess the bullet hit something! I understood that in Washington they just came and physically took the record out of the radio stations.
JAMES: I guess the people who owned the copyright were still around.
OSCAR: You can't copyright a title, and to snatch it for that reason was not...true. For example, I had a song called "Watermelon Man" and Mongo Santamaria had a song called "Watermelon Man"‹both of us had songs called "Watermelon Man!"
JAMES: Whose came first?
OSCAR: I imagine his did, but I didn't know it. Mine grew out of a childhood experience‹(sings)"HEY, WATERMELON MAN, get your WATERMELON MAN"‹the watermelon man used to sing in the alley. When I was a little kid, I started hearin' that.
JAMES: In the early 80's, you had a play called The Great Nitty Gritty, which had pop dancing long before Flashdance.
OSCAR: During the auditions, they had some pop-lockers, and they had some modern dancers over there auditioning. One gang would be the pop-lock movement, and the other gang would be the modern dance movement, and then sometimes it would coincide. And man, the critics didn't know what they were seein'! That was before Michael Jackson came out with "Thriller" and all that!
JAMES: I guess, in retrospect, some white critic would say you were ahead of your time. A black writer would say that you were just reflecting what you saw!
OSCAR: When we were doin' Kicks and Co., when we had the dances, we didn't want 'em just doin' Arabesque, we wanted 'em doin' the twist! The hully gully‹we wanted 'em to reflect what we are! And put that into a dramatic context. And I studied later, I found out that Scott Joplin had the same aspirations! He wrote ragtime dance, ragtime ballet, and it was his intention to take the Jenny Diva's dance, and the World Fair stomp, and all the dances that were popular in his time‹the Cakewalk‹and put them into a classical context, but that is really....
JAMES: That's what strikes me as weird‹when you're black, you're considered culturally deprived. When you're white, you're culturally diverse. The white creator is called diverse and ahead of his or her time.
OSCAR: Oh, I will be after I'm dead....
JAMES: But the scary part is, that the white will be immortalized while still alive.
OSCAR: It doesn't hurt so much, from a personal standpoint, because I think I got what I deserved, it's the life I cut out for myself. If you're gonna fight this man...I haven't filed federal income tax since 1965, so I just fight 'em. After I saw what happened with the Blackstone Rangers....after I realized where I was and the hostility of the whole situation, there's no point in our trying to ingratiate ourselves with these people because we're not....we (blacks) didn't come here right. We're not in the situation in the right way. We came as a degraded race and were held that way. Even when we were told we were citizens it was not with the freedom that everybody else became citizens. Everybody else who wanted to be a citizen came and was naturalized and bought into it. We were just declared citizens by edict, which meant that the slaves had to cast their political lot with the masters!
JAMES: ....and so that's how you managed to evade paying income tax since '65?
OSCAR: I don't evade....evasion is when you try to avoid payin' some tax‹my contention is that only United States citizens owe...and that's no way for them to have made my family citizens of this! My grandfather was born in 1860 in Hines County, Mississippi, he was not considered a person. In 1868, they decided he was a person, and that person was a member of this political organization and all his descendants would then be likewise, if they remained here. Well....that's crap. We're kidnap victims. We were brought here, the country acts like it didn't affront us at all. They act like they owe us no apology and that they bear no blame‹that we actually benefited from having been dragged here in chains and having the shit beat out of us. We have been bred to go along with it‹we have been bred to be afraid. (Oscar pronounces "afraid" to rhyme with "bred"‹"afred") We don't produce a damn thing for ourselves. We don't produce shoes, food, gasoline, oil‹nothin'. We have the talent and ability to turn this around if we only come to the realization of where we are and where we come from.
JAMES: I used to watch Roc every week, so it was a surprise to see you on that show.
OSCAR: Well, I was somewhat surprised myself! (laughs) I was on there for three episodes....I was supposed to be a piano player but the piano didn't have an sound comin' out of it (laughs and starts playing air piano) !
JAMES: You play anything?
OSCAR: Nope (laughs)! I play the laptop computer! (The Roc experience) was good for money‹I bought a car. I don't like that kind of television (sitcoms), personally.
JAMES: Did more people recognize you?
OSCAR: Whole lot! Lot! I mean, like the next day! I was on Roc Sunday‹Monday, phew! That became the most significant gig I'd done in ten years, as far as most people were concerned.
JAMES: Any thoughts for the future besides writing?
OSCAR: Well, no....I'll be 70 years old on my next birthday (AUTHOR'S NOTE: he looks younger), so I'm not looking for the grand tour. I'm not trying to go to any awards benefits, that's for sure (laughs)‹I don't feel like being bothered! I find that fame and fortune bring a very low class of people into your life. You meet some slick characters who need money! I'm not a total recluse. I've written some tunes in my head, I'd like to get 'em out. There are some plays I've written, I'd like to see them produced. I'd like to be around‹I'd like to be a part of that.
Clip out, keep in wallet
The soul of Oscar Brown, Jr. does not live and die by the turntable and CD player‹he's had so many hustles going at different periods of his life that records were but a fraction of his world. For a man who claims to be a songwriter first and singer second, Brown has an unusually dynamic voice, and since he has a solid theater background, his phrasing is more "stagey" than most jazz vocalists (like Brown is considered to be). This could backfire on a more obnoxious singer, but Oscar Brown, Jr. knows when to turn it up, down, or off. All reviews were written by James Porter except where noted.
SIN and SOUL (Columbia, 1960)
BETWEEN HEAVEN and HELL (Columbia, 1962)
You gotta give it up for Oscar. Anybody who'd put his most dangerous, raw, edgy, not-quite-easy-listening material on his debut albums for the biggest record company in the world deserves all the praise he can get. Especially in that paranoid era. I'll bet Mitch Miller probably had a heart attack in the CBS boardroom after hearing these. Columbia spared no expense, giving him a front-line roster of jazz musicians to work with, and turning up the imposing CBS Echo (heard on all their artists' records, from Tony Bennett to Johnny Cash), adding more depth to intense numbers like "Bid 'Em In" (about a slave auction) and "Work Song" (Sam Cooke's "Chain Gang" was never quite like this). Both records are good, but Sin and Soul is probably the best. However, the militant overtones of these records were too much to take for Columbia, which is how we wound up with.....
IN A NEW MOOD (Columbia, 1962)
That's a fitting title for this album, as Columbia seemed to be trying to cast him in a new light. His first two LP's for the label featured his talents as a songwriter (as well as a singer), and focused on material he had written for shows, or jazz songs that he had written the lyrics for (like "Work Song" or "Dat Dere"). But in contrast to those LP's, New Mood features Oscar doing covers, or standards, and includes songs like "Where Or When" and "Hey There". The only Brown-penned track on the album was another version of "Work Song" (probably considered by Columbia to be the biggest potential hit). The orchestrations, by either Ralph Burns or Al Cohn, gave the LP a more sedate feel, and had less of the jazz sound that graced his first two albums. But although it seems as if this was the album in which Oscar Brown, Jr. was to emerge as a sensitive interpreter of familiar songs, instead of presenting his own ideas, New Mood is actually not that bad a record. His voice is deep and resonant enough to give the material new power, and Burns and Cohn are (as always) great arrangers. The only difference here is that Brown's special thing‹that jazzy "umph" that he added to his own songs‹seems to be missing. (Rick Wojcik)
OSCAR BROWN JR. TELLS IT LIKE IT IS! (Columbia, 1963)
Back then, titles didn't lie. The "umph" was back. Having failed in their attempt to mold him into Nat "King" Cole, Brown's back to his old mood, this time with a small organ combo, the likes of which were just starting to invade the jazz world. This is Oscar Brown at his bluesiest‹from the organ pulsations of "Sing Hallelujah" to the twist rhythm of "Tall Like Pine." This also included the misogynist fable "The Snake", in which a lowdown guitar helps Oscar tell the tale of a pretty lady who befriends a "poor half-frozen snake." (Check out the hit version by Al Wilson, of "Show and Tell" fame, and produced by Johnny Rivers. This forgotten oldie from 1968 sounds too close to Tom Jones for comfort.)
MR. OSCAR BROWN,JR. GOES TO WASHINGTON (Fontana, 1966)
Billed in the liner notes as "the real Oscar Brown", ....Goes To Washington offers the singer recorded in a live show at the Cellar Door, a mid-sixties nightclub in the nation's capital. This set features all-new material (including the great "Living Double In A World Of Trouble", later recorded by Lou Rawls), and has tight orchestrations by Floyd Morris, one of Brown's better collaborators (who seemed to have left working for Columbia to move to the Fontana/Philips/Mercury stable to do some arranging for others, and put out a couple singles of his own). In keeping with the other stuff on the Fontana label, this LP seems to be shooting for a hip, liberal audience, and has the feel of a Nina Simone album, especially the ones recorded for Philips. (Rick Wojcik)
FINDING A NEW FRIEND (Oscar Brown, Jr. and Luiz Henrique) (Fontana, 1966)
Nice, subtle readings of (largely) Brazilian material, mostly in the bossa nova vein, with a few original compositions by Oscar. This effort emerged out of a friendship between Brown and Luis Henrique, and continued into Henrique's LP Listen To Me (for which Brown provided part of the material), and into Brown's show Joy '66. While neither hard bossa, nor Brown's usual fiery stuff, Finding is a nice mellow blending of two rich voices (even if that comment is lifted directly from the liner notes!) (Rick Wojcik)
JOY (original cast album) (RCA, 1970)
Brown shares this LP with Jean Pace and the Brazilian guitarist Sivuca. This works well on its' own merits, not just as a souvenir of the play. MVP Award: the uncredited percussionist. This long-player has a decided Brazilian influence, continuing in the vein of Oscar's duet LP with Luiz Henrique. I'll admit, I'm not the biggest fan of that kind of music (damn that Sergio Mendes!) but Sivuca's guitar playing and vocalizing is a real discovery, blending well with Oscar and Jean. I'd like to find out what Sivuca himself has in the record racks.
MOVIN' ON (Atlantic, 1972)
This set captures Oscar in a 70's jazz-funk mode. He's truly in flight, crooning in an almost operatic tone that makes the songs that much more believable. Whether he's taking his girlfriend with him to the White House, narrating a gang fight, or eulogizing a dead friend he calls "Christlike", Brown is in total command. He's getting sharper with the pen, too‹"I'm just sittin' here wishin'/That the brothers could end their division/Before they wind up like me in prison." Also out there: "Ladies' Man", later made famous by blues-soul singer Latimore.
BROTHER WHERE ARE YOU (Atlantic, 1974)
His most schizoid album ever. Side one modulates between funk and Brazilian ballads without warning. His jivey, put-on voice alternates with his operatic balladeer vocals from song to song, but on the second side Oscar says "fuck it" and decides to make it all pretty for the people, tipping the scales toward Brazilian music. According to the man himself, there was no game plan, it was just the material and his mood of the moment‹it works well. This includes "The Lone Ranger", his only hit single (#27 on Billboard's soul charts, #69 pop), and truly O.B. at his best. While Oscar whispers this song about Tonto dissing the Lone Ranger in the heat of battle as if he doesn't want to wake up the neighbors, the female singers (featuring Cissy Houston) barks out the chorus: "whatcha mean we, white man, whatcha mean we?"
FRESH (Atlantic, 1974)
Summit meeting of the giants as Oscar teams up with Jerry Butler, who produces. Oscar says that towards the end, Atlantic also tried to tone down his protest numbers so he'd have more hit record potential. This is the least jazzy of any of the albums he's recorded‹it sounds like they're aiming him squarely at the black Top 40, instead. If you're a fan of post-Shaft wah-wah funk grooves, you'll love this album‹Brown sounds very much at home with this material. Butler, at that time, had a writer's workshop in Chicago on South Michigan Avenue (the late, lamented Record Row) and most of the songs come from that collective. "Sally B. White", about a black lady in white society who forgets her roots, was almost a hit for its' writer, Charles Bevel, around the same time as "The Lone Ranger", with a race-relations tale that's just as deadly, but Brown's delivery almost turns Bevel's near-blues into a lighthearted romp. You could fill up an entire album with songs about Grandma boogalooing at some young folks' party (I've heard several records with that theme), and "Granny" (written by Butler and Marvin Yancy) is one of the better tunes in that neglected genre. Elsewhere, he does Bobby Rush's classic "Chicken Heads", gets a singalong chorus going on "Don't Mess With Bessie", and the remake of "Hazel's Hips" (originally on Between Heaven and Hell) burns down the cornfield. Brown was older, wiser, and just about worked up a sweat on this loving description of some waitress' behind.
THEN and NOW (Weasel Disc, 1995)
Many people are surprised that there is no comprehensive best-of by Oscar Brown, Jr. in the CD racks, although Sin and Soul is supposed to be reissued in June. Until then, this will do. (And don't let the wording in the credits fool you‹the first eight songs did appear on the first two albums.....but the versions here are modern-day remakes.) This is a lowkey jazz affair, and the production isn't as in-your-face like his first records were, but that just lets Oscar's voice stand out more. Of the new tunes, the highlights include the bluesy "Cyberspace Is The Place" and "The Entertainer", a bitter eulogy for ragtime pianist Scott Joplin. Way to go!