Track Listing
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. Kicks
14. Hazel's Hips
15. World of Grey
16. Forbidden Fruit
17. Straighten up and Fly Right
| Details | | Producer: | Joel Dorn (Reissue) | | Distributor: | Sony Music Entertainment | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes
Personnel: Oscar Brown Jr. (vocals); Don Arone, Everett Barksdale, A. Chernet (guitar); Phil Bodner, Walt Levinsky, Joe Solde (saxophone); Billy Butterfield, Joe Wilder (trumpet); Floyd Morris, Alonzo Levister, Bernie Leighton (piano); George Duvivier, Frank Carroll, Joe Benjamin (bass); Osie Johnson, Panama Francis, George Devens, Bobbie Rosengarden (drums).
Recorded in New York, New York in 1960. Includes liner notes by Joel Dorn, Robert Barron Nemiroff and Will Friedwald.
Digitally remastered by Debra Parkinson (Sony Music Studios, New York, New York).
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.
| See an error? Submit a change request |
All rights reserved.
