He has been scolded by the mayor of New York City, branded a communist and an anti-communist, criticized for airing songs both for and against the Vietnam War and praised by some of the country's greatest folk performers for keeping American folk music alive.
Singer-writer-producer Oscar Brand has been alternately creating controversy and winning kudos for 50 years as host of the radio show "Folksong Festival." The show airs Saturday evenings on New York public radio station WNYC-FM.Brand, an energetic 75, created the show - thought to be radio's oldest continuing program with a single host - on Dec. 10, 1945.
Over those years, Brand, who's the composer of 1,000-plus songs, has aired his own music along with traditional songs from around the world - old and new, popular and unpopular, authentic and apocryphal.
"I don't like ethnic slurs and I don't like anti-feminist music," Brand said, talking by telephone from his home in Great Neck, N.Y.
"But I've never hesitated to play controversial songs. My interest is in keeping people up to date on happenings even if I cross a line every once in a while."
Guests who have appeared on Brand's "Folksong Festival" over the decades form a "Who's Who" of the folk music world. They range from Burl Ives to Kenny Rogers, Harry Chapin, Judy Collins, Odetta, Peter Yarrow, Richie Havens and hundreds more.
Brand has a storehouse of anecdotes about his guests. He remembers, for instance, when a young Joan Baez came on his show and expressed her dislike for political songs. He remembers when Hud-die Ledbetter, or Leadbelly, sang one of his chain gang songs, "Good Morning Captain," and the day Bob Dylan, then a carnival roustabout, introduced a song called "Blowin' in the Wind," which Brand thought "would never go anywhere."
He especially remembers the day Woody Guthrie walked into the studio, stuck his lyrics on the microphone with a wad of chewing gum and sang about New York City's water shortage.
Brand began collecting folk songs as a youth in his hometown of Winnipeg, in Canada's Manitoba Province. He had accumulated hundreds by the time he moved to New York with his family. Before launching his career in music, he served in the U.S. Army during World War II.
A graduate of Brooklyn College with a degree in psychology, Brand said he stayed in the service for a year after the war in Europe ended to edit a newspaper for veterans suffering from psychiatric problems.
"When I was finally discharged I found myself in a city and country where everyone else was already working."
Finally, in early December 1945, Brand walked into the WNYC studios and offered to sing "songs unknown from the Christmas period." The studio accepted his offer, and Brand has produced a weekly "Folksong Festival" ever since - without pay and without a contract.
This explains, in part at least, why the veteran troubadour has never been edited, censored or fired.
Brand stirred up a brouhaha in the first weeks of his show when he played some German marching songs. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, convinced Brand was playing "Nazi" songs, summoned the radio host to his office. The little mayor was assuaged when Brand explained that these were traditional songs "written centuries before Hitler was born."
From the beginning Brand made his show a platform for struggling folksingers from around the world - "Nigeria, France, Holland, Germany, China and some places I've never heard of," he laughed. "And of course American performers," who came to New York from all over the country.
Because many of the singers appearing on his show were openly left-wing, the conservative Hearst newspapers labeled Brand's show "a pipeline to communism." Brand, meanwhile, a self-styled knee-jerk liberal, had been blacklisted by the Communist Daily Worker.
He didn't know this until summoned to appear as a "friendly" witness by the old House Un-American Activities Committee. Brand flatly refused.
"I couldn't testify to something I knew nothing about," he said.
A man of vast talents, Brand has had many paying jobs, too. He has produced shows for National Public Radio and for commercial television in Canada and the United States.
He has also written scripts and scores for ballets and commercials, created songs for films, co-authored words and music for Broadway shows, worked on 200 documentaries and recorded some 93 albums, including music for children.
His chief goal today is to find more time "because I have plays to write, books and concerts and documentaries to do."
"My intention," he added, "is to just keep working. I don't like to look back. I don't want to redo something I did 10, 15 or 50 years ago. I'm in the world today."