Last updated: September 21, 2019
Person
Tom Brown
Public Domain
Quick Facts
Significance:
Early Jazz Band Leader
Place of Birth:
New Orleans, Louisiana
Date of Birth:
June 3, 1888
Place of Death:
New Orleans, Louisiana
Date of Death:
March 25, 1958
Tom Brown was leader of the first New Orleans jazz band to go north and was the first known to advertise his band as a "jass" band. This native New Orleanian took his group to work a historic date at Chicago’s landmark Lamb’s Café in 1915. That engagement blazed the trail for many Crescent City ensembles that would subsequently invade Chicago. Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB) clarinetist Larry Shields actually came from Brown’s band before joining ODJB. Having toured and recorded with the Ray Miller and Yerkes bands in the 1920’s, Brown recorded again late in his career with trumpeter Johnny "Wiggs" Hyman’s band on the G.B.H. Southland label.
Brown was a member of a musical family. He began playing the violin at age 9. Learning to play trombone while working with "Papa" Jack Laine’s Reliance Band during the first decade of the twentieth century, Brown led his own bands from 1910 forward. He was adept in theatre venues as well as in nightclub and dance hall settings. His Five Rubes worked the vaudeville theater circuit on the East Coast following his departure from the Lambs Café in 1916.