Search - Ruth Brown :: Brown Is Beautiful

Enjoyable Show Biz-zy Blues

Stephanie DePue | Carolina Beach, NC USA | 04/12/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Brown is Beautiful," by blues singer Ruth Brown, is an enjoyable, soulful album, originally released in 1969. She performs "My Prayer," "Since I Fell for You," Clyde Otis's "This Bitter Earth," and Curtis Mayfield's "Please Send Me Someone to Love," among other numbers. She turns the Beatles' "Yesterday," into an expressive gospel-style rhythm and blues ballad. In her own "Miss Brown's Blues" she presents us with seven minutes that's almost semi-autobiographical - she lived through some harsh times and places, after all. She is backed by Herbie Lovelle on drums, Eric Gayle on guitar, Chuck Rainey on Fender, Billy Butler on guitar, Richard Tee on organ, and the Howard Roberts Chorale. Arrangements were by Gary McFarland.



Brown, who was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, was the daughter of a dock hand who led the church choir. It was there that she got her earliest training, but she soon showed a marked preference for more worldly repertoire and venues. In the late 1940's, early 1950's, she brought her pop singing style to then-fledgling Atlantic Records, which turned her toward the blues. She had a series of 1950's hits for the studio, including "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean,"" So Long," and "Teardrops from My Eyes." (She was once called `the girl with the teardrops in her voice.') She was so successful, that, in fact, Atlantic was known for a time as "The House That Ruth Built." From 1949-1955, she was on the R & B charts for 149 weeks, with sixteen hits in the top ten, and five #1s. She sat out the sixties, started a comeback in the mid 70's. She focused on pressing for musicians' rights in royalties and contracts, and helped organize the Rhythm and Blues Foundation. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, as the 'Queen Mother of the Blues,' and influenced many younger blues singers, among them Bonnie Raitt, with whom she toured.



There can be no question that Brown was a show biz-zy entertainer, at home on the "Great White Way." She would star in "Black and Blue," on Broadway, at the peak of her successful 1970's-1980's comeback; she won a Tony for her performance, in a year when the competition was tough; and the original soundtrack of the play won a Grammy. Sadly, she passed from us in 2006, but she leaves us a filmed memento, her exuberant performance as disk jockey Motormouth Maybelle, in John Walters's original film "Hairspray." A blues-loving girlfriend and I were lucky enough to once catch her live, during the 1980's, at Michael's Pub, in New York. You know what? Her show was, yup, showbiz-zy, but really, really enjoyable.



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