Today we remember the late great Tony Russell Charles Brown (September 13, 1922 – January 21, 1999), born in Texas City, Texas ...an American blues singer and pianist whose soft-toned, slow-paced blues-club style influenced the development of blues performance during the 1940s and 1950s. He had several hit recordings, including Driftin Blues and Merry Christmas Baby. Born in Texas City, Texas, Brown graduated from Central High School of Galveston, Texas in 1939 and Prairie View A&M College in 1942 with a degree in chemistry. He then became a chemistry teacher at George Washington Carver High School of Baytown, Texas, a mustard gas worker at the Pine Bluff Arsenal at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and an apprentice electrician at a shipyard in Richmond, California before settling in Los Angeles in 1943. As a child, Brown demonstrated his love of music and took classical piano lessons. Early on, Brown moved out to Los Angeles, where the great influx of blacks created an integrated nightclub scene in which black performers tended to minimize the rougher blues elements of their style. The blues club style of a light rhythm bass and right-hand tinkling of the piano and smooth vocals became popular, epitomized by the jazz piano of Nat King Cole. When Cole left Los Angeles to perform nationally, his place was taken by Johnny Moores Three Blazers, featuring Charles Browns gentle piano and vocals.In the late 1940s, a rising demand for blues was driven by an increasing white teenage audience in the South which quickly spread north and west. Blues singers such as Louis Jordan, Wynonie Harris and Roy Brown were getting much of the attention, but what writer Charles Keil dubs the postwar Texas clean-up movement in blues was also beginning to have an influence, driven by Blues artists such as T-Bone Walker, Amos Milburn and Charles Brown. Their singing was lighter, more relaxed and they worked with bands and combos that had saxophone sections and used arrangements. Brown died of congestive heart failure in 1999 in Oakland, California, and was interred at Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, California.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 06:16:54 +0000
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