Oscar Brand
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Oscar Brand | |
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| Born | February 7, 1920 Winnepeg,Manitoba |
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| Nationality | Canadian, naturalized U.S. |
| Education | Brooklyn College |
| Employers | WNYC |
| Website http://www.oscarbrand.com |
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Oscar Brand (born February 7, 1920, in Winnipeg, Manitoba) is a folk singer, songwriter, and author. In his career, spanning over 60 years, he has composed at least 300 songs and released nearly 100 albums, among them Canadian patriotic songs, songs of the U.S. Armed Forces, sea shanties, presidential campaign songs over the years, and songs of protest.
He has played alongside such legends of folk music as Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger. He wrote various books on the folk song and folk song collections including The Ballad Mongers: Rise of the American Folk Song, Songs Of '76: A Folksinger's History Of The Revolution and Bawdy Songs & Backroom Ballads, the latter comprising four volumes.
He has been hosting the radio show “Oscar Brand's Folksong Festival” every Saturday at 10 p.m. on WNYC-AM 820 in New York City. The show has run more or less continuously since 1945, making it the longest-running radio show with the same host, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. The show celebrated its 60th anniversary on December 10, 2005. Over its run it has introduced such talents to the world as Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Huddie Ledbetter, Joni Mitchell, and Pete Seeger. Other notable guest performers over the years have included Harry Chapin, Burl Ives, Harry Belafonte, John Denver, and B.B. King.
In the early 1960s Oscar Brand brought his substantial connections in the world-wide folk music community home to his native Canada with his CBC television program “Let’s Sing Out”. The program was staged at and broadcast from university campuses across Canada and both revived the careers of long-forgotten pioneers of the folk music movement such as Malvina Reynolds, the Womenfolk, The Weavers and others and introduced then-unknown Canadian singers such as Joni Mitchell.
His score for the 1968 Off-Broadway show How to Steal An Election sent up the current belief that charisma would help a candidate win. Standout lyrics include "Charisma" (as sung by Calvin Coolidge) and "Down Among the Grassroots." The album cover was decorated with election buttons including the 1968 Nixon campaign.
Oscar Brand has also won the Peabody Award for broadcast excellence in 1982 for his broadcast The Sunday Show on National Public Radio, and was awarded the Personal Peabody Award in 1997 (shared with Oprah Winfrey).
Brand is well known for writing catchy, themed, folk songs, including the eponymous theme to his CBC television show "Let's Sing Out" and the Canadian patriotic song "Something to Sing About," and has collaborated on a number of musicals, most notably The Education of HYMAN KAPLAN (a musical version of Leo Rosten's The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N), and A Joyful Noise.
