Oscar Brand (1920-2016) was a Canadian-born American folk singer who released nearly 100 albums and composed hundreds of songs over his long career. From 1945 until his death, he hosted Folksong Festival on WNYC in New York, the longest-running radio program in American history at over 70 years.

Brand played alongside legends like Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger. His maritime claim to fame was a series of sea shanty albums as part of his bawdy songs recordings. While he was a prolific and respected performer, he made a point of preserving the notoriously blue lyrics that sailors actually sang, providing valuable historical accuracy. Jerry Bryant later adopted an alternate persona named “Salty Dick” to perform his own renditions of many of Brand’s songs.