Oscar Brown Jr - Sin & Soul and then Some! - Rovhal Knullare

** Oscar Brown Jr. ** ** Sin & Soul...And Then Some ** Oscar Brown, Jr (October 10, 1926 - May 29, 2005) was a singer, songwriter, playwright, poet, and civil rights activist. He ran for office in the Illinois state legislature and U.S. Congress, both unsuccessfully. 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... Tracks: 1. Work Song 2. But I Was Cool 3. Bid 'Em In 4. Signifyin' Monkey 5. Watermelon Man 6. Somebody Buy Me A Drink 7. Rags And Old Iron 8. Dat Dere 9. Brown Baby 10. Humdrum Blues 11. Sleepy 12. Afro-Blue 13. Mr. Knicks 14. Hazel's Hips 15. World Of Grey 16. Forbidden Fruit 17. Straighten Up And Fly Right Review: Oscar Brown, Jr. may not have been the first jazz singer-songwriter (Mose Allison, among others, precedes him), but he certainly helped to usher in the notion of the political/protest singer-songwriter, predating Bob Dylan with this 1960 debut album. Years before Sly Stone or Gil Scott-Heron detailed the travails of black life in white America, Brown was serving up such tunes as "Bid 'Em In," where the narrator is an unrepentant slave auctioneer, and "Work Song," which added a lyric about the results of ghetto-ization to Nat Adderly's famous tune. Brown's worldview was far from bleak, though. SIN & SOUL is also full of humor-filled tunes that bring to mind the best work of Louis Jordan or Slim Gaillard. "Dat Dere," delivered in a toddler's voice, parodies young children's ceaseless curiosity, while "But I Was Cool" is an uproarious account of a man on the verge of blowing his stack. Beyond both humor and protest, Brown also wrote some straight-up jazz standards, including the swinging "Straighten Up and Fly Right" and "Afro Blue" (a regal lyric added to the Coltrane tune), both of which would be performed by countless jazz artists over the years. Keep seeding if you want to fly right. More kickass torrents(I only post what I can't find them anyplace else): http://www.thepiratebay.se/user/rovhal_knullare

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BzDelia (2008-12-21)

Thanks for posting this important work by a brilliant artist.