Remembering Oscar

by Michael Slate, Revolution #005, June 12, 2005, posted at revcom.us

I think the planet sighed shortly before noon on Sunday, May 29 as Oscar Brown Jr., an extraordinary artist and a dear friend, drew his final breath surrounded by family and friends in a Chicago hospital.

Oscar had been sick for a month but his death came much quicker than anyone imagined it would. Oscar was 78 when he died and he had lived a rich, full life centered around his art, his commitment to fighting the oppression of Black people, and a ceaseless quest for a just world. And he managed to do all that with an ever-sharpening wit and a warm and deep humor.

I spoke with him shortly before he died. We had talked about dying before—with me arguing from a communist perspective that the universe was matter in motion, and Oscar arguing that there was some kind of governing force in the universe (his latest version was that gravity was a godlike, spiritual force that he could tap into for his creative vibe). He and I both knew he was going to die soon and after one of the most touching conversations I ever had with him, Oscar marshaled up all the strength he could to make one last joke: "Listen, Red, remember how I said that old age was like moving into a bad neighborhood that you can't move out of—well, there is a way to move out but it's a little problematic. Why don't you work on that for me. And if it turns out that you all are wrong, I'll give your best to Mao."

*****

Oscar was a jazz vocalist and songwriter, a playwright, poet, and actor. He wrote more than a thousand songs and recorded at least a dozen albums. He toured with just about every great jazz musician you can name. He penned dozens of operas and plays. He wrote adaptations of Greek tragedies, including one based on the myth of Oedipus Rex where Oedipus was a freed slave who killed his slave-owning father. This play was never produced and Oscar used to like to joke that its title— Motherfucker— might have been a rock around its neck. And he wrote literally thousands of poems on every subject imaginable. And, as if that wasn't more than enough, Oscar also hosted and helped develop two television series centered on jazz.

Oscar Brown Jr. began his public life as an actor in a radio series called Secret City when he was 15. By the time he was 21 he was hosting a daily radio show called the Negro Newsfront. This show was one of the first radio shows dedicated to bringing out the stories of Black people in America. And this was a theme that he continued to mine in his art for the rest of his life.

Inspired by Paul Robeson, Oscar often talked about his work coming from and going back to the people. He talked about wanting to inspire people to do great and good things—and he wanted to do it with a smile, a joke, and a wink.

When he sang "Rags and Old Iron" or "Watermelon Man" you were right there with him in the alleys of 1930s Chicago. In "Bid 'Em In" he put you right in the middle of a South Carolina slave auction. "Work Song" told the story of how "the crime of being hungry and poor" put many a Black man on a Southern chain gang a hundred years later. But Oscar also sang about hope for a better world. "Brown Baby" was a song Oscar created while he was rocking his newborn son, and it was a song he sang to his babies at home for awhile before he recorded it. It's a song whose power and beauty was timeless, and any time he performed "Brown Baby" the song brought the audience to tears and then to their feet in wild applause.

As years go by I want you to go with your head up high
I want you to live by the justice code
And I want you to walk down freedom's road
You little brown baby

Oscar told me how the first time "Brown Baby" was played on the radio, the DJ was told to remove it from his rotation list and it was removed from the shelves of record stores along the East Coast. That was 1961!

Oscar wrote other similar songs for the musical he brought to Broadway, Big Time Buck White starring Muhammad Ali, shortly after the U.S. government took away Ali's championship belt. In that musical Oscar featured Ali singing the song "It's All Over Now Mighty Whitey"—a song where Ali declares he would rather die fighting for his people than die like so many Black men before him, "a grease spot on the highway."

Oscar once told me that the title and theme of this song was inspired by a conversation he had with a friend in L.A. shortly after the 1965 Watts Rebellion. As Oscar's friend described how people were taking care of one another and just going and taking what they needed from the stores and so on, Oscar asked how the police reacted. After his friend told him that the police were nowhere to be found, Oscar said he laughed out loud and said, "It's over now, mighty whitey!"

And there were plenty of other songs, poems and plays that brought Oscar's humor and wit to bear on all kinds of questions, from relations between men and women to physics and the law of gravity (inspired by watching little girls play Double Dutch). Broadly called the Father of Hip-Hop, Oscar was especially pleased to see the development and growth of rap with its love of the word and the melding of the word and the beats. And he was scathing whenever he got the opportunity to rip into the hypocrisy and lies of the government. His classic "40 Acres and a Mule" was a biting and hilarious exposure of how the U.S. government stabbed Black people in the back after the Civil War. After struggling for years against the record companies and theater establishment, which had turned a deaf ear and blind eye to his work, not to mention giving him a lot of grief, his recent television appearances on Russell Simmons, Def Poetry Jam brought his work out to millions from a whole new generation. And only months before he died, Oscar performed at the opening of Jazz Lincoln Center.

*****

After 9/11 Oscar was proud to be one of the signers of the Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience and he turned in a wicked performance of his tune "Bullshit," in the Evening of Conscience in New York City in October of 2002, just before the first big nationwide anti-war demonstrations. And only a year ago I got a 2 a.m. phone call from Oscar telling me that he hadn't been able to sleep very much for about a week. He said that some kind of muse had taken over, and over the course of a week he had written 200 Shakespearean sonnets all around the question, "When they opened up the cage door after the Civil War how come Black people didn't leave?" This was a question Oscar chewed on for most of his life. Oscar used to rant about the Dred Scott decision—that a Black man has no rights that a white person is required to honor—and would talk passionately about how Black people didn't come to this country voluntarily, were not considered citizens for most of the time they have been here, and were never even asked if they wanted to become citizens, yet they were supposed to have allegiance to and pay taxes to the U.S. government. Oscar not only refused to do this but he periodically would call the IRS up and try to provoke them into taking him to court. He used to tell them that he was prepared to fight this out in open court but they always refused.

Oscar was always ready and eager to fight the injustice brought down by U.S. imperialism and he always hoped to be part of a broad community aiming to do that and bring into being a better world. That— and a love of the word and writing—was one of the strong bonds between us. But within that, man, did we have our differences on how we looked at the world, the ways to change it and what kind of society would really liberate all of humanity.

I can't even guess how many nights we walked on the beach or sat in hotel rooms arguing for hours about our different views on women and the relationships between men and women. Sometimes I'd make a critical comment about a song he had performed or recorded. And it never failed, we'd argue and Oscar would always get to the point of telling me I was a puritanical, commie writer blind to the reality of the "war between the sexes" and me telling him that if he didn't watch out somebody might send him a pair of pajamas, monogrammed "Osc" and invite him to hang out at the Playboy mansion. I can still hear him laughing.

Yeah, we had our differences but we never failed to talk about them; we loved and respected each other too much to do that. We would roll around the floor for hours on end arguing about spirituality, Malcolm vs. MLK or what kind of work revolutionaries need to be doing among the people today if they are serious about getting to revolution. And revolution itself was a big subject because as much as Oscar wanted to see a revolution, he just couldn't see how it could succeed up against a monster like America.

Oscar had been a member of the old revisionist Communist Party up until the mid-1950s. He got thrown out—and as he liked to put it, it was at the same time as he quit—for being a troublemaker, especially around the question of how to end the oppression of Black people. Oscar found the reformism of the old Communist Party deadening but he never really knew what a real communist was all about. He was intrigued by Mao and revolutionary China and liked the idea of socialism and communism in theory but he had a lot of questions about artistic creativity in a socialist society—like "would he be able to do his Adam and Eve songs?"—and we wrestled for hours about how we needed a new kind of revolutionary socialist state and a new revolutionary morality or we would never get to communism.

When Oscar left the old Communist Party he took up a "cool, always cool" meld of 1960s hipster-ism and Black nationalism. In 2000 Oscar traveled to Cuba, hoping to find some semblance of a liberated society. He was bitterly disappointed—spent a week in a Miami hotel room crying—and came home to write songs and poems about the experience. But Oscar was a man who never stopped looking for answers. His mind never quit probing or provoking. When the Revolutionary Communist Party came out with the new Draft Programme, Oscar read it from cover to cover and offered up his comments. Just before he got sick he was especially intrigued by Bob Avakian's re-envisioning of socialism. He had just gotten Avakian's memoir From Ike to Mao and Beyond—My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist, and was really anxious to sit down and read the talk Dictatorship and Democracy, and the Socialist Transition to Communism. And I was really looking forward to this conversation cuz I was confident that this talk would open up Oscar's eyes to a whole new way of looking at the possibilities of a world he would want to live in.

*****

When Oscar died there was a huge hole in my chest. It was like losing a father, an older brother, a best friend and a comrade. I'm gonna miss Oscar a terrible amount, probably more than I've missed anybody for a long time. I'll probably write some more about him and his work. I'll do a special on my radio show. But, as I sat listening to some of the hours and hours of interviews I've done with Oscar, I knew that the hole would heal and then I'd be left with the memories of the laughter, the arguments, the long crazy talks, the music and the writing and most of all the utter defiance and the refusal to give up that made Oscar so dear to so many people. I think I'll end this here with his poem I Apologize that he first performed on Def Poetry Jam and then again on my radio show. There's a whole lot of Oscar in this poem and that's the Oscar I'll always hold dear.

I Apologize

I apologize
for being black
For all I am
Plus all I lack
Please, sir, please ma'am
Give me some slack
Cause I apologize

I apologize
For being poor
For being sick
And tired and sore
Since I ain't slick
Don't know the score
I must apologize

I apologize
Because I bear
Resemblance mos'
Black people share
Thick lips, flat nose
And nappy hair
So I apologize

I apologize
For how I look
For all the lows
And blows I took
On those, Lord knows
I'd close the book
As I apologize

I apologize
For all I gave
For letting you
Make me your slave
And going to
My early grave
I do apologize

I apologize
For all I've done
For all my toil
Out in the sun
Don't want to spoil
Your righteous fun
So I apologize
I apologize

For being caught
For being sold
For being bought
While being told
I count for naught

I apologize
And curse my kind
For being fooled
For being blind
For being ruled
And in your bind
Why not apologize

I apologize
And curse my fate
For being slow
For being late
Because I know
It's me you hate
I must apologize

I apologize
And tip my hat
'Cause you're so rich
And free, and fat
Son of a bitch
That's where it's at
And I APOLOGIZE

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Oscar Brown Jr., Entertainer and Social Activist, Dies at 78

By PETER KEEPNEWS, 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."

JAZZ PROMO SERVICES PRESS RELEASE REGARDING OSCAR BROWN, JR.

May 18, 2005

Industry attorney Jon Waxman reports to us that Chicago native, legendary singer/songwriter, playwright, and true American musical treasure, Oscar Brown, Jr., is in intensive care at St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago. The 78-year-old veteran entertainer was recently admitted to the medical facility in severe pain and reportedly has suffered paralysis to both of his legs. Brown underwent successful 14-hour emergency surgery on Monday, May 16th to stop the spread of an infection in his lower spine. He is presently listed in stable condition recovering from the surgery, however, his prognosis remains uncertain as of this time.

Oscar Brown, Jr. is hailed as a cultural icon and Civil Rights activist, noted for his classic compositions including, The Snake, Signifyin' Monkey and his lyrics for Miles Davis' All Blues, Bobby Timmins' ~Dat ~Dere, and Nat Adderley's, Work Song. Early in Brown's career, he hosted Steve Allen's Jazz Scene USA and the PBS series From Jump Street/The History of Black Music. Brown has mentored several aspiring young performers and in 1968 hosted a Gary, Indiana talent show that led to his discovery of The Jackson Five and singer/actor Avery Brooks. In 1969, Brown is credited for rewriting the comedy production Big Time Buck White, and his musical version of the show was presented on Broadway, featuring former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali in the lead role.

The Brown family requests "Prayers" from his Global family at this time and will provide a formal statement following his recovery period. For information about Mr. Brown and to send to him any personal messages you may have, please visit his web site at www.oscarbrownjr.com, which will also accept messages for Oscar. Good wishes from all of you will go a long way to help aid in his recovery.

Inside the Culture of Resistance

Michael Slate Interviews Oscar Brown, Jr.

The following interview was part of the Artists Network's "Inside the Culture of Resistance"-- a series of conversations with artists videotaped in front of a live audience.

Oscar Brown Jr., a legendary rhythm & blues and jazz singer who has composed several hundred songs and recorded 11 albums. He received two Emmy Awards for a television special, and he hosted the PBS series From Jump Street: The Story of Black Music.

He hosted the first Black radio news show in the country, collaborated with Max Roach on the "Freedom Now Suite", and composed the Broadway musical "Big Time Buck White" starring Muhammad Ali.

The interview was done at the World Stage in Leimert Park in Los Angeles, and was conducted by journalist Michael Slate.

Oscar Brown, Jr. performing at Artspeaks in Watts, 1999
Photo by Carlo Medina

Michael Slate: One thing I was listening to last night, an interview with Paul Robeson on one of the Pacifica stations. And he had talked about that his politics always enriched and deepened his art. And he also said though, that, it also is something you pointed to earlier. He also worried about the fact, that it meant too that they didn't always give him the chance to distribute his art as broadly as possible. And in Robeson's case, taking away his passport, not allowing him to do concerts. He had to leave the country at a certain point. And with you, there's always has been a battle. There's always been a battle to basically take the big stages. Not to just be content with doing, as good as they were, the trade union theater, or small recordings. You fought to take the big stages.

And one of the times you intially set out to do that was "Kicks & Company." And I know, again, when you were performing at the Jazz Bakery, a brother from this area actually turned around to me and said, "You know, I was growing up in Cheyenne, Wyoming and it's a very small Black population in Cheyenne, and it was winter and was really cold. And I was just thinking, 'What the hell am I doing, I have to out and walk to school..'" And he turned on the Today show, and Dave Garoway (sp?) suddenly turned over the entire 2 hours to you. And he said he started to listen to you and started to listen to what you were doing with "Kicks and Company". And he said he skipped school that day. It changed his life. It sent him off in a whole different direction, in a creative direction. And why don't you tell us a little about "Kicks and Company" How that developed, what you were looking at then.

Oscar Brown Jr.: I met "Mr. Kicks" one New Year's day after a hell of a party! (laughter in audience). And my friend and I were talking about people who just live for kicks. And so, the idea, 'permit me to introduce myself. My name is Mr. Kicks. I come from the hollow hell hole way down by the river Styx.' Now that's the first time I met this dude. He took over. And I began to try and write a play with that as the central character. As a musical. We had the songs "Mr. Kicks" and some other songs that I was able to adapt to that.

I had a heroine. I had a song called "Hazel Hips". And the heroine as Hazel worked very well for her. That kind of thing got me started with that. But it took years, a couple of years, actually, to write that. Because as I said, at that time, most of the people would be writing something that they adapted something from. But I couldn't find anything to adapt anything from! There wasn't that much of a body of literature, certainly not theaterical literature, from which to draw. So, I had to come up with some idea of my own.

Based on my whole identification with Robeson and his influence and all, he and Dick Durham, my party membership, my whole life experience it had. I was still going to be the person I have been, the revolutionary I had been in my twenties. Even as I went into my thirties, to writing plays and stuff. And I was going to write a play that put Mr. Kicks in a working class situation in a trade union situation.

But just then I saw a picture of some kids on Ebony magazine who were in jail in North Carolina at a sit-in. And oh my, this was you know, was the thing. So, I made the focus of the thing, 'Freedman University for Negroes' in Down South, and Mr. Kicks was trying to corrupt this sit-in movement. Because he realized that white kids consider what Black kids do is hip. And he was afraid if this whole love movement took hold that it would jump the color line. And in fact it did. It wound up later. So that was somewhat prophetic I thought. But at that point none of that actually happened.

But I written this play, I wrote part of the play. And this was while I was in negotiations with Al Hamm about Columbia Records after I sent the contract back in the 'who needs him' episode. And about a year later Al calls up, and says 'hey you know we are the best game in town so why don't you sign', 'that's our standard contract, you get a hit movie and you write it.' But that never happened. But I signed. Because it was the best game. I've been trying other things for a year but nothing was working. And this was Columbia records, you know, with Frank Sinatra and Doris Day and you know what the hell.

And it was cool. I mean If I hadnt been so serverely exploited you would have never heard of me! (audience laughter) Had I maintained financial integrity with my art no one would have heard of my art. That was just the way it was. That was the only game in town.

But when I went there I carried the draft of "Kicks & Co." with me. And I showed it to Laurene Hansberg (?) and ... And they liked it and wanted to produce it for Broadway. Turned out it would cost $400,000 to produce on Broadway. This was in 1960 when $400,000 was considered alot of money. And I said 'shit if I thought it was going to cost that, I never would have written it!" (audience laughter) I would have assumed that would be an impossible amount of money to raise.

However, upon the success of "Raisin in the Sun" there was a kind of new climate as far as that was concerned. And here I was coming on not just with a play, but with a musical. And it had some charming songs in it. And you know you only give excerpts to 'backers auditions'. They dont get the whole play. So I had all that honed out.

So we would be doing backers auditions, raising the money, most of the time in the wealthy homes, in the homes of wealthy people in New York and Philadelphia. That was interesting. I remember doing it to people who own Teeled Beer (?) were connected with the people who were producing us. And they had us up there in Central Park West. And it was magnificent. Martin Luther King came that time. And he wrote a very glowing praise of the piece, because it was about what he was about. Other people, Eleanor Roosevelt, attended one of the backers auditions, because the backers auditions began to grow and grow and grow until it became four or five hundred people in the backer's auditions. Shelley Winters and Harry Belafonte, and all kinds of folks would come.

So we got, you know, real glowing reviews, and we got alot of money coming in. But at the same time, I had recorded 'Sin and Soul'. I had gotten a record contract, and that's why I came to New York with the play. So I recorded 'Sin and Soul'. And as soon 'Sin and Soul' came out they wanted me to start singing on a stage. And they started talking to me about the mystique of a new star. And boy, I started to seeing myself up there - so the homebody idea went out. (audience laughter)

And I got a gig at the Village Vanguard singing and I was terrific. I was just a natural right from the beginning. I don't know how I did it but I just did it. I had all kinds of stuff. I had a 'do and red hat and all kinds of stuff. I just dazzled them with footwork.

And all the agents came and tried to sign me to their agency and offering me money. And I said 'Shit, I have this play coming on Broadway, so whatever you say now will be obsolete when I get this hit on Broadway. That where we're going to get the big money. So, I'm not even signing with anybody.' But this guy, Joe Glazer, one of these little slimy dudes. Joe Glazer put me on the Today program just to show me how powerful his agency was. And I sang "Brown Baby", "Red Rags ol Eyes", and "Dat There". And it was the day when they were reporting the news about the girls getting blown up down there in Alabama.

And when I sang, "Brown Baby" they were crying. And they gotten more cards and letters then they ever gotten from anybody that they had on in the nine years. And all the cards and letters were positive. There was not one KKK attitude in that at all.

And it was coming from Middle America. I think most them came from Tennessse. And from people like, Mary Margaret McBride, I don't know if you ever heard, or not old enough, but she was a real Aunt Bee type. (audience laughter) And there would be tears on the pages on some of them. And it was really impressive.

And I discovered then that this is something that they dont want. They're ready for the guy who says "Off the Pig!" Cause they're ready for that. They wish the hell you would come with that. You know. Because they want to kill you. But if you say something that is going to endear you to other people. If your going to create sympathy. If you're going to create a beauty. If they're going to see you in another light. That, the establishment will not tolerate!

to be continued...