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About Harold Ray Brown
- Harold Ray Brown (born March 17, 1946) is a founding member of War, an American funk band in the 1970s and 2000s.
- Harold had a number of roles over the years, acting as drummer, percussion, vocalist, and bandleader. Brown is the oldest of six children, and the only one in his family to pursue music.
- Beginning with the congas, Brown progressed to violin while in elementary school, and took up drums in junior high.
- He turned down a full scholarship to Valparaiso University in 1964 in order to pursue music. Brown was rooted in the very beginnings of War.
- In 1962, he met Howard E.
- Scott at the Cozy Lounge in Long Beach, California.
- They were fifteen years old at the time and were hired to play in a band for a casual gig. Brown started a band called the Creators in 1963 in Long Beach while going to Long Beach Polytechnic High School, to play for high school sock hops and car shows.
- Then in 1967, toward the end of the Vietnam war, he and Howard Scott restarted the band with a new name, Night Shift.
- Brown had been working as a machinist on the Night Shift.
- In February 1969 while playing a show at the Rag Doll Night Club in North Hollywood, California Eric Burdon and Lee Oskar jammed with the Night Shift.
- The band changed its name to War. Brown left the band to attend college in 1983, majoring in computer science, with a minor in music.
- He then moved to New Orleans in 1986.
- In 2001, Brown went back to school to pursue his lifelong hobby; he is now a historian and professional tour guide in New Orleans, and has recently formed a new band called the Lowrider Band with three of the other original members of War: Howard E.
- Scott, Morris “BB” Dickerson, and Lee Oskar.
- Brown also works with inner-city youth during the summer, to promote good citizenship through the art of fine drumming.
- Harold Ray Brown is a founding member of The StandUp4Music™ Foundation.
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