When Oscar Brown Jr. hit the scene more than 30 years ago, he hit it poised for stardom. A London newspaper hailed the Chicago resident as the heir apparent to Sammy Davis Jr. During the 60s he frequently appeared on TV talk shows–The Steve Allen Show, the Today show. His musicals appeared on Broadway. Kicks & Company, starring Burgess Meredith, ran on the Great White Way, as did his musical adaptation of Big Time Buck White starring Muhammad Ali.
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Nearly 67, Brown is still hoping for that big break. He’s now in Los Angeles working on a new musical called Sanctifism and making a living doing nightclub gigs and TV jingles. Meanwhile, his daughter Maggie Brown is in Chicago working as a one-woman publicity machine to get her father the recognition she feels he merits and trying to secure publishing deals for his songs. She has logged all 600 of them into a computer and is getting his scripts into shape for publication and then submission to theater companies across the country. On occasion she also books her father into local nightclubs.
“He was really big,” she says. “Miles Davis said, ‘Whoa! Following him was like following World War II.’ Just great praise and critical acclaim. And I’m not exactly sure what stopped it all. There are things that he wanted to sing about and write about that got him blackballed from the recording industry.” She says recording execs weren’t willing to get behind an artist who chose subjects such as slave auctioneers and mocked the country’s history of prejudice in numbers such as “40 Acres and a Mule.”
One of Oscar Brown Jr.’s shows that has never been produced is a biography of Scott Joplin called Maple Leaf, in which he put words to some of Joplin’s most famous tunes. He has always seen parallels between his own life and the ragtime master’s. “In ways, he’s just like Joplin,” Maggie says. “It’ll probably be after he’s gone that they’ll realize what a great writer he was and what a fabulous poet he is. They’ll wait until then. People call him a living legend. Well yeah, but he’s a legend trying to make a living. I hope I can generate interest, spotlight, and money while he’s still living, and that it won’t come to the point where there’s no money left.”
