Tell It Like It Is!

The brilliant Oscar Brown, Jr. was still riding high in the early civil rights era — endorsed by Eleanor Roosevelt, no less — when he cut his fourth Columbia album. Although this one is not as flashy and sassy as the earlier Sin and Soul and Between Heaven and Hell, it would still make an impact, contributing some memorable numbers to the jazz vocal canon. Duke Pearson's "Jeannine" is retrofitted with an OBJ lyric about a golddigger that made it a standard. We also hear the first appearance of the sly fable "The Snake" (later an Al Wilson hit) in a bossa nova treatment, and Brown has the cheek to graft some impressionistic words onto Miles Davis' "All Blues." From the musical Kicks and Co. comes "Man, Ernest Boy," a wry, even encouraging look at the black nouveau riche as done in a hip recitation; the only non-Brown number is folkie Mike Settle's then-popular, gospel-like "Sing Hallelujah." This is a must-find from Oscar Brown's most fertile period, and not too hard to locate secondhand. ~ Richard S. Ginell, Rovi