In 1961, “Today Show” host Dave Garroway took the unusual step of dedicating two hours to a young songwriter-playwright attempting to fund a full-length musical, “Kicks & Company.”
Garroway was wowed when he saw Chicago’s dynamic native son Oscar Brown Jr. perform at New York’s Village Vanguard.
Staged at Chicago’s McCormick Place, directed by Lorraine Hansberry, “Kicks & Company” never made it to Broadway. But it did garner further attention for the recording artist of the hit album “Sin and Soul.”
Yet you may never have heard of Brown.
Local filmmaker donnie l. betts’ “Music Is My Life, Politics My Mistress: The Story of Oscar Brown Jr.” has been making the rounds on the film festival circuit, collecting awards. But it hasn’t yet snagged a distributor. That’s a shame. Fortunately, the documentary begins a one-week run at the Starz FilmCenter.
The filmmaker grasps that American biography is American history. With its trove of archival images and sounds, its richly varied interviews (Studs Terkel, “Star Trek’s” Nichelle Nichols, poet Amiri Baraka) the film suggests a Ken Burns effort. Only betts has a sweet sense of humor and so, too, does Brown, who died last May at the age of 78.
Born in 1926, Brown was the son of two Howard University grads. His father was an Army officer who fought in France in World War I. Later, Oscar Brown Sr. and his brother opened a law firm in Chicago. His father also ran the Ida B. Wells housing project when it was a beacon of hope, not a signifier of urban despair.
As upper-middle-class as he was, Brown says, “I was also raised in the streets of Chicago.” And his love for those streets comes across.
Filmmaker betts makes elegant use of images of the Chicago of Brown’s youth. And Brown’s performances attest to loving witness. “By the time the iceman left,” goes one line about the horse-drawn cart, “we had a new second base.”
The movie opens with Ed Sullivan introducing Brown, who performs “The Work Song.” And betts wastes no time giving us a bracing taste of Brown’s physicality, which he never seemed to lose.
In one of the movie’s high points, the performer nearly entrances with his incantory rhythms. Then we realize this is the sales pitch of an auctioneer: “Don’t mind the tears. That’s one of her tricks … bid ’em in. bid ’em in.”
As loving as it is, “Music Is My Muse” doesn’t paint a tidy portrait but one of an artist as a young man, an older man, a black man, a human.
When he talks about falling for his third wife Jean Pace Brown and leaving Maxine Brown, you can hear the sound of breaking glass and trust. betts takes care with this bumpy terrain. And interviews with Brown’s grown children are wincingly authentic.
Not only does the director take stock (and pleasure) in Brown’s contradictions, the poet-activist seems to get a kick out of his failings.
In the late 1960s, Chicago was rife with gang violence. Brown’s work with one gang – Blackstone Rangers – has yet to join the likes of similar “inspired by” flicks like “Mr. Holland’s Opus.” What a missed opportunity.
“Music Is My Muse, Politics My Mistress: The Story of Oscar Brown Jr.” | *** RATING
NOT RATED|1 hour, 50 minutes|ARTIST DOCUMENTARY|Directed by donnie l. betts; featuring, Oscar Brown Jr., Studs Terkel, Nichelle Nichols, Abbey Lincoln, Amiri Baraka, Maggie Brown |Opens today at the Starz FilmCenter.
