A musician’s music, is only what it is, music.
Some is sad, some is happy.
Some is fast, some is slow.
-Marion Brown
That Big River called Jazz runs very deep and wide. It’s also very unpredictable. How we hear the music and when and in what order is so random - it really is a journey of discovery.
Many years ago, my dad shared with me something he had heard. He said to me, “You don’t change, except from the people you meet and the books you read.” If he were here now, I’d tell him that there is a third exception: the records you hear.
Music has had a tremendous influence on my life. First, the old protestant church hymns we sang on Sunday morning, then the blues, and later on jazz. However, my first love was the blues.
In high school, while most of my classmates were going to the Kiss concert, I was going to see John Hammond at Wilebski’s Blues Saloon on the corner of Western and Thomas Avenues in the Frogtown area of St. Paul. As I recall, this was less a saloon and more an old house, where the top floor had been converted into a “music venue” and John Hammond came out of a bedroom carrying his guitar in one hand and National Steel Duolian Resonator in the other to set-up shop in front of an empty fireplace.
After the blues, while in college I moved to my second love: the much deeper and abstract world of Jazz. Now, while classmates were going to see Bruce Springsteen or Billy Idol, I was down in the Village Vanguard listening to Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio trying to trade black Wayfarer sunglasses with Mick Jagger. As I recall he told us, “I would, but they’re Jerry’s.”
My jazz journey has brought me so many experiences that have clearly changed and guided me over the years. For some reason, the music of Marion Brown maintains a special place in my journey. I saw his face before I ever heard his music.
The first time I remember seeing his face is while reading through a book I found while in London - probably at Ray’s Jazz Shop on Shaftesbury Avenue.
The book is The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz. Here’s my ragged, well-read copy:
In the book under Marion Brown, of course, there is a picture of one of his album covers - this one:
For some reason, that picture stayed with me.
The first time I heard him play was, oddly enough, not on the legendary recordings he did with John Coltrane nor Archie Shepp, but rather in a very unlikely place: Harold Budd’s 1978 Pavilion of Dreams from Brian Eno's Obscure Records label:
Marion Brown plays on Budd’s song Bismillahi 'Rrahmani 'Rrahim. Interestingly, Brown featured this song a few years earlier on his own 1975 Impulse! record Vista, which we’ll hear from a little later….
Marion Brown was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1931. In his autobiography, Recollections, he tells about his early years:
“My mother was just an ordinary woman. She was a practical nurse. She had a High School education. But she was a very together person. My grandfather and grandmother had no education. But my grandfather on my mother’s side was a medicine doctor, a root man. Whatever you call it. He told fortunes and made medicine for people. He made internal medicine, herbal medicine. He was into that. My grandfather was crippled. I used to go to the woods with my uncles when I was a little boy; to pull roots out of the ground. They would go along in front of me and pull them up; because they knew what to do. I would come behind and put the roots in a sack. Then we would take them home.”
At eighteen, he joined the Army. After service in the Army, he returned to Atlanta to attend Clark College, where he studied with the legendary Chick Webb reedman Wayman Carver.
Here is Chick Webb and his Orchestra performing Lonesome Moments recorded in December 1933 with Wayman Carver - he might be on clarinet. He’s joined by Chick’s all-star band including Mario Bauza, who went on to fame as co-founder and musical director of Machito and his Afro-Cubans and the great Elmer “Tone” Williams on tenor sax, whose solo at the 1:00 minute mark remains one of my all-time favorite solos not played by Lester Young (listen to the solo three times to start to really hear it):
In 1960, after graduating from Clark College and intrigued by the legal aspects of the civil rights movement, he enrolled in a pre-law program at Howard University. He later described this unsatisfying venture as an “intermission” in his artistic odyssey. In 1962, he moved to New York, where he befriended poet Amiri Baraka and many musicians including Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, and Sun Ra. It was while playing with Sun Ra that Brown says, “Sun Ra called me aside and told me not to play like Charlie Parker." He would soon record on several mid-1960s important avant-garde albums, such as Shepp's Fire Music and New Wave in Jazz, but most notably John Coltrane's Ascension.
Here’s a song from his 1966 Impulse! album Three for Shepp:
I highly encourage you to watch this short film of Marion Brown in New York City, made by Henry English as a project at the 1967 NYU Summer Motion Picture Workshop. Shortly after this film, Marion Brown left New York City for Paris.
In 1967, soon after he arrived in Paris, Brown made this short video for French TV, featuring French musicians Bob Guerin on bass and Eddy Gaumont on drums. This clip shows more of the avant-garde side of his playing at that time:
While in Europe, he met with German multi-instrumentalist and vibraphonist Gunter Hampel, with whom I think Marion Brown played his most interesting and inspiring music. Here’s a cool poster from 1968 with Brown playing in Hampel’s band:
In 1969, accompanied by Steve McCall (drums and percussions), Barre Phillips (double bass), Alain Corneau (cowbells), and Ambrose Jackson (trumpet) in the legendary Parisian studio Davout, Hampel and Brown recorded the soundtrack to Marcel Camus’ movie Le Temps Fou. The film was released in 1970 under the title Un été sauvage and unfortunately was not a big hit and subsequently fell into oblivion. Fortunately, the soundtrack remains. Here’s the movie poster from the film:
…and here’s the cover of the soundtrack:
This is a great album and reminds me a lot of what the Art Ensemble of Chicago was doing in Paris at the same time. Here’s a classic from that album, recorded in Paris in September 1968 on the Privilege label, a sub-label of Polydor:
In 1970, Brown returned to the US, where he felt a newfound sense of creative drive. He moved to New Haven, Connecticut, to serve as a resource teacher in a child study center in the city's public school system until 1971. From 1971 through 1976, he held numerous faculty positions at Bowdoin College, Brandeis University, Colby College, Amherst College, and Wesleyan University. In 1976, he earned a Master's degree in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan. His master's thesis was entitled "Faces and Places: The Music and Travels of a Contemporary Jazz Musician".
During this time, Marion Brown’s music mellowed. Here is Vista, a beautiful song from his album of the same name, recorded for Impulse! in 1975. I find this a nice example of where his music was going during that time, and Reggie Workman might just put in one of the best bass performances in jazz history:
Like me, Marion Brown’s first love was the blues. Here’s a charcoal, black and white pastel drawing he did of the famous bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson.
“My reference is the blues, and that's where my music comes from. I do listen to music of other cultures, but I just find them interesting. I don't have to borrow from them. My music and my past are rich enough. B.B. King is my Ravi Shankar.”
-Marion Brown
You can find more of his artwork here.
In 2010, then Governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick issued a proclamation naming September 15 Marion Brown Day and urged “all citizens of the Commonwealth to take cognizance of this event and participate fully in its observance.” The proclamation was presented to Marion’s son Djinji Brown.
Governor Patrick is the son of Pat Patrick, the baritone saxophonist who spent most of his career working with Sun Ra.
Here’s one more for the road, the first Marion Brown song I ever heard, Bismillahi 'Rrahmani' Rrahim from Harold Budd’s 1976 Pavilion of Dreams:
Next week, on that Big River called Jazz, we will portage our canoes and put in at the wild waters of Sun Ra….
If you like what you’ve been reading and hearing so far on our journey and would like to share this with someone you think might be interested in learning more about our great American art form: Jazz, just hit the “Share” button at the bottom of the page. Also, if you feel so inclined, become a subscriber to my journey by hitting the “Subscribe” button here:
Also, find my playlist on Spotify: From Fred Astaire to Sun Ra.
Feel free to contact me at any time to talk shop. I welcome and encourage that….
Until then, keep on walking….
Great article this week, Mr. King. I was not really into Marion Brown before but you gave me the chance to check him out here. Appreciate it brother. Funny how things cross paths. I was just checking out Rick Beato’s video this week and noted the reference to Keith Jarrett in your post as a connection. Hope you enjoy it!
https://youtu.be/0BgXCDuqZvM
Peace. ☮️