Pud Brown

• Genres: Jazz

Biography

The late Pud Brown, a jazz saxophonist and clarinetist based in New Orleans, was a saxophone virtuoso at the tender age of five. Within two years, he hit the road with his parents and four siblings to play gigs throughout the U.S. with additional stops in Mexico and Canada. The family played nightclubs, circuses, and minstrel and tent shows, covering more than half a million miles in a prototype motor home designed by his engineer father. In 1924, it rolled across the continent at no more than 25 miles an hour and was equipped with such amenities as a sewing machine, a sink, and electric lights. Their stage was a panel in the back of the motor home that flipped down. Despite this rough vaudevillian start, those years were good ones for both the musician and the music. When he was older and had played more famous places with more famous musicians, Brown still recalled with fondness or awe the names and fine musical abilities of musicians he had played with as a boy during the '20s in far-flung places in the Midwest.

The saxophone and clarinet player was born Albert Francis Brown in Wilmington, DE, in 1917 to parents who hailed from the Louisiana city of Shreveport. Brown met the woman who would become his wife, Louise, in 1940, and the couple wed the following year. They made their home in Chicago and Brown found work with Lawrence Welk and others. By 1945, the jazz musician and his wife relocated to Shreveport. He left music and they ran a motorcycle business, but the venture failed to pan out. Persuaded by his wife, Brown went back to the world of music. He played numerous jobs in an effort to reduce the debt he'd sunken into, and eventually the couple settled in Los Angeles. The move turned out to be a good one and found Brown and his bands playing at Hollywood's Royal Room, Sardi's, and other popular nightspots. Among the artists he performed with during his almost three decades in California were Les Brown, Coleman Hawkins, and Louis Armstrong. Brown headed back to New Orleans in 1975 and played such venues as the Palm Court and the Blue Angel.

Music did more than fill Brown's work hours -- it was a strong part of his off hours, as well. Instruments filled his homes, and he spread the joy he'd found through music to the next generation by performing in local schools under a program sponsored by the Louisiana Jazz Federation. Sometimes he repaired schoolchildren's instruments free of charge. ~ Linda Seida, Rovi