Richard "Rabbit" Brown (c. 1880 – 1937) 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 ...

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

ist and composer. His music has been characterized as a mixture of

, pop songs, and original topical

ballads A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or ''ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...

. He recorded six sides for

Victor Records The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American recording company and phonograph manufacturer that operated independently from 1901 until 1929, when it was acquired by the Radio Corporation of America and subsequently operated as a subsidi ...

on March 11, 1927, one of which, "James Alley", is included in the 1952 ''

Anthology of American Folk Music ''Anthology of American Folk Music'' is a three-album compilation, released in 1952 by Folkways Records, of eighty-four recordings of American folk, blues and country music made and issued from 1926 to 1933 by a variety of performers. The album wa ...

'' and has been covered by

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...

, among others.

Biography

Brown was most likely born around 1880

New Orleans, Louisiana New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

. He lived in New Orleans from his youth on. He eventually moved to the Battlefield, a rough district of the city, where several events inspired some of the songs he later wrote. He mainly performed at

nightclub A nightclub (music club, discothèque, disco club, or simply club) is an entertainment venue during nighttime comprising a dance floor, lightshow, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who plays recorded music. Nightclubs gener ...

s and on the street. Including the recording also selected for the ''

'' five of Brown's six known recordings appear on the

compilation album A compilation album comprises Album#Tracks, tracks, which may be previously released or unreleased, usually from several separate recordings by either one or several Performing arts#Performers, performers. If by one artist, then generally the tr ...

''The Greatest Songsters: Complete Works (1927–1929)''. His sixth recorded song, “Great Northern Blues,” was not released and is considered to be lost. Brown died in 1937, probably in New Orleans.

Topical songwriting

At least four of Brown's most popular songs were topical

. "The Downfall of the Lion" and "Gyp the Blood" were based on events that occurred in New Orleans. Neither of these songs was recorded, but both were later remembered and named by Brown's contemporaries. Two of Brown's recorded songs, "The Mystery of the Dunbar's Child," and "The Sinking of the Titanic," are considered to be original topical songs, and not "folk" songs in the sense of being passed along from performer to performer with slight variations.

Blind Willie Harris

An anthology of rural acoustic gospel music, ''Goodbye, Babylon'', released in 2003, included one of the two known recordings by an otherwise undocumented singer named Blind Willie Harris. This piece, "Where He Leads Me I Will Follow," was recorded in New Orleans in 1929, and in describing it, the authors of the CD liner notes pointed out its "strikingly similar" resemblance to Richard Brown's 1927 New Orleans recordings. Since then, more discussion has ensued among early blues and gospel collectors and scholars, leading many to state without equivocation that Harris was a

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...

of Brown's, although no documents linking the name Harris with Brown have been found.

Quotation

—Rabbit Brown

References

External links