Olive Brown

If the blues seems to be the only musical genre named after a color, the performer named Olive Brown represents a small part of the music's unique color wheel. Brown changed her name from Olive Jefferson and apparently not for matrimonial reasons, so an assumption can be made that she was seeking an association with a pigment in demand with interior decorators and designers. From a career perspective, Brown makes for quite a unique shade, in that she played drums as well as sang, led her own bands such as Olive Brown & Her Blues Chasers, was associated with the music scenes in three major cities in the Midwest, and was comfortable not only with blues but with jazz and even early rock & roll. Jefferson had yet to turn Brown when, at age five, she sang at a sanctified temple in St. Louis. By then her family, including a mother who played ragtime piano, had relocated to Detroit. Her professional debut was in Motor City clubs in the early '40s, and within several years she had relocated west to the Windy City. Brown maintained an axis of gigging most of her career between Chicago, Detroit, and St. Louis. Because of both being born and dying in the latter city, it is there that her name is often listed as a native talent, following Helen Brown alphabetically. Her connection with Chicago is just as strong, however, and includes the required connections with talent such as the Todd Rhodes Orchestra, Earl Bostic, Cecil Gant, Tiny Bradshaw, Gene Ammons, and even the young soul singer Jackie Wilson. In the mid-'60s she recorded for the Spivey label, a typical mishmash organized by label maestro Victoria Spivey, which allows listeners to sample the color contrast between guest star Muddy Waters and Olive Brown, a brown-in that might be followed nicely with the album Raw Sienna...