When I was kid, there used to be a scrap man who walked through our alley singing out, to the best of my recollection, “old stoves, radiators” in the hope that residents would take advantage of his willingness to cart things away for them and thereby provide him with materials he might recycle for cash in the years before the 1960s, when recycling programs sprouted.

I say to the best of my recollection, because Maggie Brown, the very talented daughter of Oscar Brown, Jr., told us, at the Jazz Institute of Chicago’s Peddling Music in Rhythm program, that her father wrote the song Rags and Old Iron after he finally realized what the guy in his alley had been calling out.

Maggie and her excellent backup trio then entertained us with a rendition of that, preceded by Herbie Hancock’s similarly-inspired Watermelon Man, and followed by her own songs, songs by Abbey Lincoln, and other of her father’s songs, which she told us would be part of a 2026 celebration of what would have been his 100th birthday.

Maggie, known as a storyteller, took us back to the days of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and gave us a sneak preview of a project or hers about Scott Joplin, including a version of The Entertainer for which she has written lyrics.

All throughout her performance, Maggie never stopped moving, gliding soulfully to the music whether while singing or listening to the band’s instrumental interludes.