OSCAR BRAND
Recorded over 60 albums (several of them with bawdy material) for Tradition (with Jean Ritchie), Folkways, Riverside, MCA, ABC, Impulse, Elektra, etc.
Host of "The Folksong Festival", WNYC, New York, NY (first broadcast Dec 10, 1945; featuring performers like the otherwise blacklisted Pete Seeger; providing Bob Dylan with one of his first radio performances, Oct 29, 1961. ).
In 1960s, host of of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (Social Security Administration) radio program "The World of Folk Music" (also featuring Bob Dylan), CBC-TV's "Let's Sing Out"; in 1970s host of National Public Radio's "Voices in the Wind" and NBC-TV's "Spirit of '76" (among others); one of the creators of "Sesame Street."
Author of approximately ten books and music manuals, incl. Singing Holidays, Bawdy Songs, The Ballad Mongers, etc.
OSCAR BRAND:
I went with Dave van Ronk to see Dylan's early performances at Folk City... I thought Bob was pretty crummy. He was a pale version of Woody, and I thought some of his songs were maladroit... Once in a while, he would hit the right element of poetry. He was like Woody, in that he wrote bad and he wrote good. When he wrote good, he was a genius. He was a performer of some considerable fire; and that makes you overlook a lot of things...
IZZY YOUNG:Wed., October 25.
Oscar Brand walked into the store and I got Bob Dylan on his program this sunday....The Izzy Young Notebooks, reprinted in The Telegraph 56 (final issue, Winter 1997), p. 66.