Mr Kicks
Hazel’s Hips
Excuse Me For Livin’
Lucky Guy
Forbidden Fruit
Opportunity Please Knock
Elegy
Sam’s Life
Hymn to Friday
Love is like a New Born Child
When Malindy Sings
World Full of Grey
Oscar Brown Jr (vocals), Orchestra with arrangements by Quincy Jones and Ralph Burns
rec. 1962
SUPERBIRD SBIRD 0023CD
[35:36]
Replicating an LP on CD results in LP playing time, obviously. Thus Oscar Brown Jr’s Between Heaven and Hell, in which the first side represented
Hell and the flip-side Heaven (loosely speaking), clocks in at an unimpressive 35-minutes. This was his second album for Columbia Records, released in 1962
and is, perhaps surprisingly and according to the notes, here making its CD premiere appearance. The songs are almost all Brown originals, and there are
two poems by black poets to which Brown added the music – Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s When Malindy Sings, one of Brown’s better-known recordings, and Elegy (Plain Black Boy), penned by Gwendolyn Brooks.
An articulate and thoughtful singer, known for his political views, he also espoused the hipper edge of the vocalising spectrum, plainly revealed by Hell,
six engaging tracks with a backing band often spearheaded by the trumpet of Joe Newman (there are no personnel details listed in the booklet notes). A
couple of the tracks were arranged by Quincy Jones and Brown plainly enjoys the fruity delights offered by Hazel’s Hips to which Newman adds some
salacious commentary. Quincy Jones also arranged Mr Kicks, another swinger; otherwise the arranger was the excellent Ralph Burns.
Brown’s lyrics were often mordant, droll or blues-hip; often a delight, seldom a drag. His voice was flexible though not especially distinctive and the
backing offers support variously booting, kicking and elemental. A solid walking bass often suffices and that in Lucky Guy is exceptionally
effective. He also draws on Gospel lineage, as in the Pop-cum-Preaching quality that pervades Forbidden Fruit with some splendid Patti Brown
piano. The Heaven tracks are, at their best, less obviously ingratiating but perhaps deeper and more expressive, less of the here and now. At their worst
they occupy a mediocre middle ground. There’s a rather conventional Blues feel to World Full of Grey – it’s got the sort of feel of a Nina Simone
song. In fact I wondered often how much of an influence Brown was on Simone.
So measly playing time but until an enterprising label wraps this up with another Columbia release – though his others have appeared on CD – or something
else new to silver disc, this is at the moment the only way to acquire this distinctive recording.
Jonathan Woolf
CD Reviews
SUPERBIRD SBIRD 0023CD
