Reggie Houston - vocals
Janice Scroggins - keyboards
Reinhardt Melz - drums
Peter Dammann - electric guitar
Curtis Salgado - harmonica
Andre St. James - acoustic upright bass

I recorded, "A Dime Away from a Hot Dog," as both an homage to its writer and true renaissance man Oscar Brown Jr., and to the poetic blues at its core which are in themselves a tribute to the indomitable human spirit. Oscar Brown Jr. wrote over 1,000 songs and many thousands more poems. He was a political and civil rights activist, Broadway playwright, radio announcer for the first African American news show, a radical and brilliant thinker, and above all, an educator. For me this song evokes the voices of the Harlem Renaissance poets Langston Hughes, Jessie Redman Fauset and Countee Cullen, while conjuring images of the post-war boom to the post-boom depression roller coaster cycle of our great society.