Sin & Soul - Oscar Brown Jr.

 

Somebody Buy Me A Drink

Sin & Soul

Oscar Brown Jr.

Columbia Records CS 8377

1961

Piano - Floyde Morris, Alonoz Levister

Trumpet - Billy Butterfield, Joe Wilder

Drums - Osie Johnson, Panama Francis, George Devens, Bobbie Rosengardner

Sax - Phil Bonder, Walt Lewinsky, Joe Solde

Guitar - Don Arnone, Everett Barksdale, A. Coherent

Bass - George Duvivier, Frank Carroll, Joe Benjamin

From the back cover: How does it happen that personalities of such stature come together own praise of a new and heretofore unknown talent? Among them are one of the giants of show business, a prize-winning playwright, a leading critic and musicologist, a celebrated journalist and TV personality, a fine contemporary percussionist, and a great jazz artist and interpreter. Clearly such endorsements cannot be solicited like cigarette testimonials; they can only be a genuine response for an art and artistry in which each finds something personal and permanent.

Oscar Brown, Jr. is an integrated artist in a non-integrated world. He is a whole man in a compartmentalized age. He is singer, actor, poet, composer – yet the sum of these is more than any of its parts:

Each song, as performed in this album, is a total statement of mood and meaning; a terse, emotion-charged vignette; a distilled unit of human experience. Raw or tender, loving, laughing, prideful or tormentingly blue – each is that unique moment wherein artist and audience share a world.

And there are worlds here for each of us.

Chicago-born, married, father of five, Oscar Brown, Jr. emerges in this album from their select inner circle of artists' into the great public eye. The full range of his talents is soon to be demonstrated later in the Broadway production of the musical, "Kicks & Co." of which Mr. Brown is lyricist, composer and author. – Robert Barron Nemiroff

My songs started when I was a kid flipping rides on the wagons that peddled down our alley, hiding and seeking and learning there is more than one world. Most of my worlds are Negro. Being Negro is not always pleasant, but it is vigorous exercise for the soul. It can enrich an artist. The melodies I make up grow out of tunes, rhythms, chants, calls and cries that have always sung to me. My lyrics are verses about feelings I've felt and scenes I've dug. My aim is to deliver messages that swing and entertainment that is meaningful. – Oscar Brown, Jr.

From Billboard - January 9, 1961: Oscar Brown, Jr. is a young man with a lot of natural talent, with ideas and a strong manner of projecting his material. On this album he comes through with exciting performance of modernized Negro-folk material, with most of them penned by himself. The music of three of the tunes was written by Bobby Thompson, Nat Adderly, and Bob Bryant. If the material was a little less hackneyed the album could have been a standout, but even as it is "Work Song" and "Rags And Old Iron" crackle

But I Was Cool

Bid 'Em High

Signifyin' Monkey

Watermelon Man

Somebody Buy Me A Drink

Rags And Old Iron

Dat Dere

Brown Baby

Humdrum Blues

Sleepy

Afro-Blue