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Healing a musical mind
by Chris Roberts, Minnesota Public Radio
December 23, 2003

Despite his ongoing struggle with depression, Brown the musician has periodically risen to the top of the pop music world. He can sit for hours telling amazing stories of his experiences with some of the great recording artists of our time. (MPR Photo/Chris Roberts)

Few musicians have experienced more highs and lows than 63-year-old Odell Brown. The jazz and rhythm and blues keyboardest has helped write chart-topping hits, and performed with such legends as Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye. Odell Brown has also struggled all his life with depression. At one point, his mental illness nearly ended not only his professional career, but music making in general. Brown, who for the last nine years has lived in Richfield, is fighting back. He's even released a Christmas CD.

Richfield, Minn. — Odell Brown might be viewed as the Brian Wilson of American rhythm and blues. The keyboardest has spent much of the last several years holed up in his Richfield home, tinkering in his upstairs studio, waging a battle against his own mind.

Up until 20 years ago, Brown was a highly sought after musician. The Kentucky native started his career in the mid-'60s in Chicago when a position as jazz organist for Chess Records fell into his lap. After a time, Curtis Mayfield pleaded with him to join his group. Brown later served as music director for Minnie Riperton and Johnny Nash, and played with Marvin Gaye for 10 years. Brown has had a "right place at the right time" kind of career.

	A rediscovery of joy

"That's the way my life has been," he says. "I have this strange kind of odd blessing, that I have never actually sought after anything. It all kinda just... I stumbled on it."

Unfortunately, Brown has never been able to fully enjoy his success. He suffers from severe depression. Often it's been precipitated by the loss of family members or close friends. When he's overtaken by depression, Brown says he's completely incapacitated.

"I can't think of a reason why I want to get up out of bed," he says. "I can't think of a reason why I need to go and eat anything. I can't think of a reason why I'm still walking around here alive."

Despite his ongoing struggle with depression, Brown the musician has periodically risen to the top of the pop music world. He can sit for hours telling amazing stories of his experiences with some of the great recording artists of our time.

One pinnacle achievement was writing the string arrangement for Minnie Riperton's only hit, Loving You. He was in L.A. with Curtis Mayfield, who had enlisted him to help Riperton with her songwriting. The two decided to stop by her house one day.

"When we got there Minnie had just had a youngest child, Maya, and she was breast feeding Maya," he says. "Stevie Wonder was in the front room, working on the Perfect Angel album. Stevie and her husband was in the front room. I was in the kitchen teasing Minnie about breast feeding her kid while I was trying to eat chicken. In the process of Minnie getting kind of upset, she was singing this very beautiful lullaby to her baby. That was Loving You."

	Rescued

From 1973 to '83, Brown served as Marvin Gaye's music director. He co-wrote Sexual Healing, a song that rekindled Gaye's career. It happened unexpectedly. Brown and Gaye were staying in a hotel in Belgium, and Brown was noodling on the keyboard. Gaye liked what he heard and started singing an impromptu lyric. The president of CBS Records at the time, happened to walk in on their jam session and said they had a hit on their hands.

"I felt it was special, but I didn't think it was a big hit," Brown says. "It was special for a lot of reasons. I was feeling better after being depressed for awhile. Things were coming together and if you listen to the song really well, you'll realize it's a gospel song. The changes are absolute gospel. And it's an amen chorus and 'heal my darling,' 'heal me my God.' It's all in the song. It's a gospel song."

Months later, Marvin Gaye was shot dead by his father. The tragedy caused Brown to spiral downward into deep depression; so deep he eventually ended up suicidal and homeless on the streets of Long Beach, Calif.

He was ultimately rescued by the V.A. hospital in Long Beach, and by his future wife, Barbara Whiteman, a Minnesota musician he had met years before in Chicago. Brown calls Whiteman his "guardian angel," a woman who doggedly kept track of him, and finally convinced him to move to the Twin Cities.

"I didn't really know that he had depression," Whiteman Brown says. "I just knew he wasn't doing good, or he'd get where he'd just get really kind of sick and everything and not feel like doing anything. So I'd always kinda, just keep going to California, and I always try to get him to move out of California, but the music business was there so he felt like he had to stay all the time."

Once in Minnesota, Brown turned to the local Veterans Hospital for help. He says the slower pace here and change of seasons stabilized his life and allowed him to pull himself together. It took years, and each year, Brown dreaded the holidays.

"Christmas time is the absolute worst time in the world for people who suffer from depression," he says. "And every Christmas I needed more medicine; I needed to be around somebody. I needed a hotline. It's a difficult time. And so one of the therapists suggested 'get into Christmas, get into it. Try to get into it instead of running away from it.' So I started doing Christmas carols."

"It worked for a minute," Brown says. "I mean every year then it goes back down and every year I have to start all over, but it's been going on for so long now I have about 12 or 14 songs on an album now."

That CD is called Seasons Greetings from Odell Brown. He produced and released it on his own. Everything you hear comes from Brown's keyboards. He describes it as "a birthday party for Jesus."

"This CD that I just did is a Christmas CD that is the sum total of all my therapy," he says. "So now, everybody can enjoy my therapy with me."

"You hear Good King Wenceslaus as reggae, and then Silent Night takes a little doo wop turn to it," Brown says. "Yes, yes, yes it's a party. You can hear all the different moods and the struggle to celebrate. The more I did it, last year especially I started feeling really...this Christmas...this is Christmas time. This is the best I've ever felt on Christmas. Absolutely."

Brown says the CD isn't a return to the music business, but a rediscovery of the pure joy of music, something he hasn't felt in awhile.

"This Christmas greetings from Odell Brown," he says, "I am saying, "hi everybody! How you doing?' I've been away for awhile but I think I'm back to hang around a little bit this time."

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