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Tom Brown
- Louisiana State University Press
- Chapter
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/ Remember Jazz • 63 ments to film an edition of National Geographic. As a younger man, similarly laden, walked by, he and Sidney recognized each other and exchanged greetings, though Sidney displayed no sign ofcordiality. Pointing to one of the mans cameras, he demanded, "How much you want for that?" "1don't want to sell it, Sid. I just got it," the man replied. Bechet turned away and the man introduced himself to me. His name was Emmett Matthews, no mean soprano saxist himself and a member of the internationallyacclaimed Red Caps. He tried a little small talk on Bechet; but since Sidney ignored him, he left us with polite goodbyes. I mentioned to Sidney that he hadn't treated this acquaintance very considerately. "He wouldn't sell me his camera!" Bechet pouted, withirritation. "He ain't got nothin' else I want and I don't need him to give me sax lessons." Bechet never showed me any of his photographs, even the ones he took of me with various musicians. He promised to have a set made for me, but he never bothered to do it. One night after a concert, I paid him his thirty-five dollars. Then after counting the exceptionally high box office receipts, I handed him an extra hundred. He didn't even thank me, though I never failed to thank any musician when he finished a concert of mine. The next time I called Bechet for a gig he said, "I ain't comin' unless I get seventy dollars." Now, nobody in the world valued Bechet more as an artist than 1, but I knew there were limits to his box-office value. My musicians were always guaranteed scale, and they got bonuses according to the nights take. I asked Bechet if he ever worked a job for me that hadn't brought him more than seventy dollars. He told me he didn't remember. "You want to take this job for a flat eighty bucks and no extras?" I pressed. He hung up on me. For that concert I hired Edmond Hall. Tom Brown The music we have come to call Dixieland made its debut north of the Mason-Dixon Line under the leadership of Tom Brown, born in 64 • I Remember Jazz New Orleans on June 3, 1888. He and his Band from Dixieland made their bow at Lamb's Cafe in Chicago in 1915, and that started it all. Tom played a thoroughly satisfying trombone, and his influence on succeeding sliphorn players was universal. He was not merely an innovator but a protean performer capable of filling every ensemble hole, in and out of his register. He was also as thorough a bigot as the sunny South ever produced . He provided leadership to a tiny group of peanut-brained musicians , many of whom, I must say in fairness, were among the greatest jazzmen New Orleans ever produced. But this crackbrained coterie effectively kept black and white musicians in the Crescent City from playing together for two generations. Not that there weren't some outstanding white jazzmen, like Johnny Wiggs and Armand Hug, who had no prejudice. Nevertheless some of them refrained from performing with black musicians for fear of being blacklisted by their colleagues . Raymond Burke, Harry Shields, and Boojie Centobie, a trio of super clarinetists, were indifferent personally to the color line; but except for recording sessions, they refused to work mixed band jobs for me, though Raymond never objected to sitting in informally with black musicians. Yet Tom Brown, except for this neurosis, could be a charming, friendly fellow. We did do a few things together in the fifties. But since he was nearly illiterate and, where music was concerned, opinionated to the point of rejecting any concept he hadn't initiated, the potential for a working relationship was very narrow indeed. For a time, late in his life, he attempted to operate a small job-printing business. But he was frequently handicapped by his inabilityto spell simple words. I gave him a job once over the phone—printing personal cards for me—but he spelled the street I lived on then "St. Louse Street" and insisted 1should have spelled out "St. Louis" over the phone if I was going to be so picky. One Monday evening in 1954, I was managing the regular monthly meeting of the New Orleans Jazz Club in the University Room of the Roosevelt Hotel. I invited Tom to sit in with a group of...