One of the great jazz trumpeters of the post-'70s period, Oscar Brashear was vastly underrated and often overlooked for two main reasons: he never led his own record date, and he was based in Los Angeles for three decades. In reality, Brashear, whose style was influenced by Lee Morgan, Woody Shaw, and particularly Freddie Hubbard, held his own with much better-known players and deserved to be famous. He started playing piano when he was seven, and trumpet at 11. After attending Wright College and Roosevelt University, he had stints with the orchestras of Woody Herman (1967) and Count Basie (1968). After freelancing around Chicago, he moved to Los Angeles in 1970. He stayed busy in the studios and on jazz dates, teaming up with (among many others) Bobby Hutcherson, Hampton Hawes, Joe Henderson, Horace Silver (1975), J.J. Johnson (1979), Jimmy Smith, the Gerald Wilson Orchestra, Harold Land (off and on since the early '70s), the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, and Billy Childs (with whom he often played duets). Brashear was also a busy and successful studio musician, backing Frank Sinatra, Willie Nelson, Carole King, B.B. King, Earth, Wind & Fire, and many more. Oscar Brashear died on July 27, 2023, and will be remembered as a gifted sideman who never recorded as a leader. ~ Scott Yanow