Jazz Review : Oscar Brown Jr. Shows Off His Eclectic Skills

Oscar Brown Jr. has always been a difficult performer to categorize. Part jazz singer, part poet, part entertainer and part songwriter, he has persistently avoided the stylistic pigeonholing that seems essential to a high-visibility career in the music business.

His appearance at the Jazz Bakery Wednesday night, however, illustrated the long-term creative values of the pursuit of his own muse. Working only with pianist Calvin Brunson, Brown delivered a collection of quirky, off-center tunes--mostly originals, with a few idiosyncratic adaptations of jazz standards--with a platform-stalking, declamatory presentation that required every bit of his eclectic skill.

At 68, and not especially prominent in either the jazz or the pop mainstream, Brown has matured into a detached, wily elder, offering his view of life and love with the sly irony and knowing theatrics of a player who has seen it all. Many of his songs simmered with the double-entendres and whimsical sexual metaphors intrinsic to his writing style. “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in,” he sang in one lyric. Another described a “Honey, do this, honey do that” relationship and, in a third, he postured--only half jokingly--”One good bull is half the herd.”

Other pieces had a darker quality, one that often was tinged with the barely disguised bitterness of aging. “There he sits,” Brown sang of one character, pondering his mortality, “recounting his blessings, the blues and the bliss.” And of another, looking back on receding joys, “What was that we used to do?”

Brown’s performance was energized by the deceptively propulsive jazz rhythms he brought to each of his tunes. And Brunson was the perfect accompanist, singing a few lines of harmony here and there, tossing in an occasional improvisation, but primarily acting as a kind of rhythmic Greek chorus to Brown’s captivating flights of poetic fancy. * Oscar Brown Jr. at the Jazz Bakery, 3233 Helms Ave., Culver City, (310) 271-9039. $20 entrance charge. Brown plays two sets each night, 8:30 and 10:30, through Saturday.