‘They Said You Came This Way . . .’

 by whiteray

Sometime in the late 1950s, musician and civil rights activist Oscar Brown, Jr., sat down sat down with fellow musician Norman Curtis and worked out a tune titled “Brother Where Are You,” a song of despair that was also a quiet call to action and its listeners’ self-reflection: 

A young boy walked down a city street
And hope was in his eyes
As he searched the faces of the people he'd meet
For one he could recognize

Brother, where are you?
They told me that you came this way
Brother, where are you?
They said you came this way

The eyes of the people who passed him by
Were cold and hard as stone
And the small boy trembled and began to cry
Because he was all alone

Oh, there are many who say it’s true
That brothers are we all
And yet it seems there are very few
Who will answer a brother's call

Brother, where are you?
They told me that you came this way
Brother, where are you?
They said you came this way

“Brother, Where Are You” first showed up on record on Abbey Is Blue, a 1959 album by jazz singer Abbey Lincoln. (A year later, Lincoln would team with Brown, Coleman Hawkins and other jazz luminaries for the album We Insist! – Freedom Now, a civil rights-themed project released in anticipation of the hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1963.)

The tune is familiar to me – and others of my vintage, I assume – because of its inclusion by Johnny Rivers in his 1968 masterpiece Realization. In those environs, the song became less a plaint about racial injustice and more a call for economic and political justice. (It was, of course, not uncommon in the late 1960s and early 1970s for young, socially aware white men to call each other “brother” with no irony and little self-consciousness.) 

I have no way to know where Rivers found the song, but there were several versions of it out there. Among the more notable versions I found were several early soul/R&B versions of the song, one by a group called Thee Midniters from 1965 and another by a singer named Richard Simmons (not the exercise dweeb) in 1966. The early 1960s also found covers coming from, wide-ranging types of performers, among others, Marlena Shaw, Jack Jones and the Brothers Four. I also found a live 1965 performance by the composer himself, later released on the album Mr. Oscar Brown, Jr. Goes to Washington. (All the covers mentioned but not shared here are available on YouTube.) 

One of the more interesting covers of the tune is by the Remo Four, a Liverpool group from the mid-Sixties that released some good records and worked with, among others, Beatle George Harrison. Among its members were Tony Ashton and Roy Dyke, who with Kim Gardner, later scored a one-hit wonder – “Resurrection Shuffle” – in the U.S. as Ashton, Gardner & Dyke. In 1967, the Remo Four’s version of “Brother Where Are You” was included on Smile, an album released in Germany. 

One of the most indelible parts of River’s recording of the song on Realization is the chant of the background singers: “Lookin’ for a soul brother all around me.” I’m not at all sure where that originated, but it’s included as well on the version Al Wilson used to close his 1969 album Searching For The Dolphins. As Rivers produced Wilson’s album, which was then released on Rivers’ Soul City label, the repeated use of the background hook is unsurprising and is effective in both tracks.

There have been other covers of the tune over the years, of course. The website Second Hand Songs lists twenty-seven covers, with the most recent being a take on the tune by jazz vocalist Dwight Trible in 2019. But as is the case with many tunes, I still hold the familiar close. So the version I first heard, Rivers’ take on the tune, is the one I turn to.