If you're able to dance this mess around and sing at 77 as captivatingly as Oscar Brown Jr. did this past weekend, then you should wake up every morning, kiss your reflection, and thank who-/whatever you praise. Nobody's gonna blame you. The snap in Brown's step may not have been as sharp as it was when he debuted in 1960 with Sin and Soul (Columbia), but his voice had barely aged a second. Backed by the nimble and responsive Aaron Graves Trio--pianist Graves, drummer Larry Bright, and bassist Kenny Wright--Brown glided through a short but rousing set that culled witty, funny, soulful, and politically minded songs from his younger years' classic songbook, but Brown's delivery added the ballast that time lends.

An actor and radio personality prior to becoming a singer, Brown never lost his dramatist's engaging banter, and he eased into his set riffing on his own life and memories, cracking up a predominantly middle-aged audience with his anecdotes. "When you told people you wanted to be a singer they told you to wake up [and] get a job" Brown joked, before inviting, "Let's go back to when jazz didn't get a college education."

The group slid spotlessly into "All Blues," the Miles Davis tune to which Brown set free-verse lyrics back on 1963's Tell It Like It Is! A slow stroll at first, with Brown declaring "the blues are more than a color" in a hushed voice, the lyrics grew more imagistic as the tempo picked up and Graves' piano embellished lines over the melody.

It delivered a quick reminder that Brown was not only a talented songwriter and lyricist, but remarkably gifted at penning sympathetic, colorful lyrics for instrumental jazz of his time. He followed "Blues" with Bobby Timmons' "Dat Dere," to which he wrote childlike lyrics inspired by his son, and Thelonious Monk's "'Round Midnight." In the middle of "Midnight," the trio wound through Monk's luxuriously angular tune and Brown broke into an extemporaneous performance of his own "The Beach" poem--"For those arriving on this beach/ There is no prayer to pray nor preach/ To beg us off in any tongue/ Since we have outlived dying young"--before returning the song itself.

Brown's genre and mood juggling--spoken word and jazz jumping from lighthearted (his hilarious renditions of "Signifyin' Monkey" and "The Snake") to reverential (a gospel-tinted backing to another poem recitation), and almost blue (a ribald "A Ladiesman")--was a appropriate close to an evening's worth of civic-minded creativity. This event marked the 75th anniversary of West Baltimore's Unity United Methodist Church, as well as the 15-year service of its senior minister, the Rev. Kwame O. Abayomi. Both were presented with Baltimore City Council resolution commendations--and Brown was named an honorary citizen of Baltimore--and the entire event felt like a neighborhood celebration. The Umoja African Dancers opened the evening, vocalist Tamm E. Hunt performed, Rosemont Elementary and Peabody Preparatory student Evan Canty played three short violin pieces, and Brown was immediately preceded by the foxy moxie of poetess Jah Hipster (whose "A Jazz Poem" and "Freedom: A Love Poem for All My Soldiers on a Budget" were exactly what spoken word should be--short bursts of engaging, passionate verse). And a simple line from one of Brown's performed poems provided the perfect couplet for it all: "To take time and make it swing/ is so valuable a thing." True.

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