Buster Brown (August 15, 1911 – January 31, 1976) was an American

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

and R&B singer best known for his hit, " Fannie Mae".

Biography

Brown was born in

Cordele Cordele is a city in and the county seat of Crisp County, Georgia, Crisp County, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, United States. The population was 11,147 at the 2010 census. Cordele calls itself the Watermelon Capital of the World. History Cord ...

, Georgia. In the 1930s and 1940s he played harmonica at local

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and made a few non-commercial

recordings A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, r ...

. These included "War Song" and "I'm Gonna Make You Happy" (1943), which were recorded when he played at the folk festival at Fort Valley (GA) State Teachers College, for the Library of Congress' Folk Music Archive. Brown moved to New York in 1956, where he was discovered by Fire Records owner Bobby Robinson. In 1959, at almost fifty years of age, Brown recorded the rustic blues, " Fannie Mae", which featured Brown's harmonica playing and whoops, which went to # 38 in the US Top 40, and to #1 on the R&B

chart A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can represent tabu ...

in April 1960. His remake of

Louis Jordan Louis Thomas Jordan (July 8, 1908 – February 4, 1975) was an American saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and bandleader who was popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as " the King of the Jukebox", he earned his high ...

's " Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby" reached # 81 on the pop charts later in 1960, but did not make the R&B chart. "Sugar Babe" was his only other hit, in 1962, reaching # 19 on the R&B chart and # 99 on the pop chart. In later years he recorded for

Checker Records Checker Records is an inactive record label that was started in 1952 as a subsidiary of Chess Records in Chicago, Illinois. The label was founded by the Chess brothers, Leonard and Phil, who ran the label until they sold it to General Recorded ...

and for numerous small record labels. He also co-wrote the song "Doctor Brown" with J. T. Brown, which was later

covered Cover or covers may refer to: Packaging * Another name for a lid * Cover (philately), generic term for envelope or package * Album cover, the front of the packaging * Book cover or magazine cover ** Book design ** Back cover copy, part of co ...

Fleetwood Mac Fleetwood Mac are a British-American rock band, formed in London in 1967. Fleetwood Mac were founded by guitarist Peter Green, drummer Mick Fleetwood and guitarist Jeremy Spencer, before bassist John McVie joined the line-up for their epony ...

on their 1968 album, '' Mr. Wonderful''. He enjoyed further attention in 1973 when his song "Fannie Mae" was included in the film '' American Graffiti'' and its accompanying

soundtrack album A soundtrack album is any album that incorporates music directly recorded from the soundtrack of a particular feature film or television show. The first such album to be commercially released was Walt Disney's ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'' ...

Death

Brown died in New York City in 1976, at the age of 64. It is often erroneously cited that Brown's real name was "Wayman Glasco" – however, that was Brown's manager who, after his death, bought all of Brown's publishing – thus unintentionally creating the confusion. Though likely a nickname, or alias, Buster Brown may have been his birth name.

Discography

Studio album

*''New King of the Blues'' (Fire, 1961)

Compilations

*''Get Down With Buster Brown'' (Souffle, 1973) - reissue of the Fire lp. *''Raise a Ruckus Tonight'' (DJM, 1976) *''Toughest Terry & Baddest Brown'' (Sundown, 1986) – with

Sonny Terry Saunders Terrell (October 24, 1911 – March 11, 1986), known as Sonny Terry, was an American Piedmont blues and folk musician, who was known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers and oc ...

*''Good News'' (Charly, 1989) *''The Very Best of Buster Brown'' (Collectables, 1999)

References

External links

* Allmusicbr>Illustrated Buster Brown discography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Buster 1911 births 1976 deaths American blues singers American rhythm and blues singers 20th-century African-American male singers Harmonica blues musicians People from Cordele, Georgia Singers from Georgia (U.S. state) Checker Records artists