Birth name Richard Brown Labels Victor Name Rabbit Brown | Instruments Vocals, guitar Role Guitarist Years active Early 1910s–1930 | |
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Record label Victor Talking Machine Company Albums The Greatest Songsters: Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order, 1927-1929, Done Seen Better Days Similar People Hambone Willie Newbern, Billy Taylor, Mississippi John Hurt, Clark Terry, Harry Carney | ||
Richard "Rabbit" Brown (c. 1880 – c. 1937) was an American blues guitarist and composer. His music has been characterized by a mixture of blues, pop songs, and original topical ballads. He recorded six singles for Victor Records on May 11, 1927, one of which, "James Alley Blues", is included in the Anthology of American Folk Music and has been covered by Bob Dylan, among others.
Contents
Biography
Brown was most likely born around 1880 in or near New Orleans, Louisiana. 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 nightclubs and on the street. A couple of his most popular songs were topical ballads, "The Downfall of the Lion" and "Gyp the Blood", which were based on events that occurred in New Orleans.
Brown died in 1937, probably in New Orleans.
Five of his recordings appear on the compilation album The Greatest Songsters: Complete Works (1927–1929).
An anthology of rural acoustic gospel music, Goodbye, Babylon, released in 2003, includes 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 the Brown's 1927 New Orleans recordings. Since then, more discussion has ensued among early blues and gospel collectors and scholars, leading some to state without equivocation that Harris was a pseudonym of Brown's, although no documents linking Harris with Brown have been found.
Quotation
—Rabbit Brown