A Mixture of Memory and Devotion: the Music of Marion Brown

On the 50^th anniversary of the release of the first of Marion Brown’s Georgia Trilogy LPs, The Bitter Southerner’s Jon Ross creates a poetic profile of the alto saxophonist who died at 79 in 2010.  Product of Atlanta’s Buttermilk Bottom neighbourhood, Brown’s composition on the albums Afternoon of a Georgia Faun, Geechee Recollections and Sweet Earth Flying, reflected the rural woods, urban alleyways and educational and religious background of that area. These 1970s sessions,  which featured contributions from, among others, vocalist Jeanne Lee, trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, pianists Paul Bley and Dave Burrell and drummer Andrew Cyrille, also included echoes of African music, which Brown studied as an ethnomusicologist. Actually Brown, who made his reputation in New York, playing with pianist Burton Greene and tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp in many bands, and later expatriated to Europe for two years, actually spent little time in Georgia after graduating from Clark College. But as a dignified Southerner, who, according to Burrell “understood the dynamics of social relationships,” he was able to give the musicians’ free reign to successfuky interpret the musical mixtures that informed his very personal compositions.