Roger Parham-Brown

Roger Parham Brown is a traditional folk singer. He sings mostly anonymous folk songs in English and Spanish. You might have heard them sung by Bellafonte, Baez, Odetta, Taj Mahal, Barbara Dane or Dave Von Ronk.  However you have never heard them sung like Roger. 

Roger in the vein of the 50’s beat generation began his career by reading poetry, in what was the only beatnik coffee shop in the Washington D.C. area, where he became a regular at the progressive party’s hootenannies. It was there that he became very impressed with Pete and Mike Seeger and he started playing folk music. Along with Richard Dabney and Bill Walker, Roger went on to read in some of the better known Greenwich Village spots. He then went on to Cambridge Massachusetts where he opened for Joan Baez at Club 47. It was while hanging out with Richard and Mimi Farina and Kweskin’s jug band that Roger first started to play folk music. After Roger met and participated in some experiments with Timothy Leary, He and his good friend Dick Gregory began seeking publishing deals for Roger’s work. 

After working for the Boston Globe as a general news reporter, he became the public affairs writer for Boston’s NBC, WBZ channel 4 television, while at the same time being the movie critic for Boston’s classical radio station WCRP. Roger then met and married Anne Haywood Matthews a renowned painter in her own right. Together they moved to Woodstock NY where he took up with, David Sandborn, Rod Hicks and others (Maria Muldaur, Paul Butterfield). It was while in Woodstock when Roger was a reporter for the Times Herald Record that he and Anne decided to move to Oaxaca, Mexico so that Roger could work on his first published novel “When Quincy Wakes” as well as having the leading role in Mexican director Raul Fernandez’s film “Fuego Negro”.  Until, as true beats the urge to travel on brought them to Bucharest,  Romania, where Roger continued writing and was published in Transition (a magazine of international affairs) sponsored by Harvard’s WEB Dubois Society. 

All this aside, Roger has been living in Los Angeles for the past 17 years. He has been honing his musical skills and is now ready to take it on the road. You will be astonished by what you hear. A voice that reverberates with the texture of time, colored with the true soul of folk. Listen and be prepared to be amazed.