Researching Tom Brown

right|frame|Tom Brown in the early 1910s

Tom P. Brown was born in Uptown New Orleans, Louisiana. His younger brother Steve Brown also became a prominent professional musician. He played trombone with the bands of Papa Jack Laine and Frank Christian; by 1910 usually worked leading bands under his own name. The band played in a style then locally known as "hot ragtime" or "ratty music". In early 1915, his band was heard by Vaudeville dancer Joe Frisco who then arranged a job for Brown's band in Chicago, Illinois.

On May 15, 1915, Tom Brown's Band from Dixieland opened up at Lamb's Cafe at Clark & Randolph Streets in Chicago, with Ray Lopez, cornet and manager; Tom Brown, trombone and leader; Gussie Mueller clarinet, Arnold Loyacano piano and string bass; and Billy Lambert on drums. In Chicago Gussie Mueller was hired by bandleader Bert Kelly, and his place was taken by young New Orleans clarinetist Larry Shields.

This band seems to be the first to be popularly referred to as playing "Jazz", or, as it was spelled early on, "Jass". According to Brown, once his band started enjoying popularity the local Chicago musicians union began picketing his band of non-union out-of-towners. One picketer's placards intended to link Brown's band with the Storyville prostitution district of New Orleans and the implied disreputable low life status; the signs read "Don't Patronize This Jass Music". The term "jass" at that time had a sexual connotation. The signs had the opposite of the intended effect; more people came to hear the band out of curiosity as to what "Jass Music" might be and how it could be performed in public. Brown realized the publicity potential and started calling his group "Brown's Jass Band". Some recently rediscovered Chicago newspaper advertisements list it as "Brown's Jab Band" or "Jad Band", confirming the reminiscences of Ray Lopez that the bandmembers assumed that "Jass" was too rude a word to be printed in the newspapers so they looked in a dictionary for printable words close to it, like "jade".

Years later, Brown would frequently brag that he led "the first white jazz band" to go up north. The Original Creole Orchestra (a Ragtime group) preceded him but there's no evidence that they played Jazz at this time.

Tom Brown's Band enjoyed over four months of success in Chicago before moving to New York City, where it played for four months more before returning to New Orleans in February 1916. Upon arriving home Brown immediately started rounding up another band to go back to Chicago with him. The group again included Larry Shields; at the end of October, Brown agreed to switch clarinetists with the Original Dixieland Jass Band bringing Alcide Nunez into his band. Brown, Nunez and New Orleans drummer Ragbaby Stevens then went to work for Bert Kelly, who brought them to New York where they temporarily replaced the Original Dixieland Jass Band at Reisenweber's in 1918. Brown started doing freelance recording work with New York dance and novelty bands, then joined the band of Harry Yerkes. At the start of 1920 he was joined in the Yerkes Band by Alcide Nunez.

Tom Brown also played on Vaudeville in the acts of Joe Frisco and Ed Wynn.

About late 1921 Brown returned to Chicago and joined Ray Miller's Black & White Melody Boys, with whom he made more recordings. During this period he also co-lead a dance band with his brother Steve.

In the mid-1920s he returned home to New Orleans where he played with Johnny Bayersdorffer and Norman Brownlee's bands, making a few excellent recordings.

During the Great Depression he supplemented his income from music by repairing radios. He opened up a music shop and a junk shop on Magazine Street. He played string bass in local swing and dance bands. With the revival of interest in traditional jazz he played in various Dixieland bands in the 1950s, notably that of Johnny Wiggs. A local television station thought it would be a good idea to invite Brown and Nick LaRocca to talk about how jazz first spread north from New Orleans, but the show had scarcely started before the two old men got into an argument that turned into a fist-fight.

Tom Brown made his last recording just weeks before his death, his trombone playing apparently not suffering from the fact that he had neither teeth nor dentures at the time. Brown died in New Orleans.

Brown was born at either Shifnal or Newport in Shropshire; he is identified with the Thomas Brown, son of William and Dorothy Brown, who was recorded christened on 1 January 1663 at Newport. His father, a farmer and tanner, died when Thomas was eight years old. He took advantage of the free schooling offered in the county during his day by attending Adams' Grammar School at Newport, afterward continuing his education at Christ Church, Oxford and there meeting the college's dean, Dr Fell.

Fell was well known as a disciplinarian, and Brown throughout his life displayed a disdain for restrictions. The legend behind Brown's most recognised work is therefore plausible: it states that Brown got into trouble while at Oxford, and was threatened with expulsion, but that Dr Fell offered to spare Brown if he could translate an epigram from Martial (I, 32, 1):

:Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare;:Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te.

According to the story, Brown replied immediately:

:I do not love thee, Dr Fell,:The reason why I cannot tell;:But this I know, and know full well,:I do not love thee, Dr Fell.

Fell is said to have stayed Brown's dismissal from the college in admiration of this translation. However the story is of apocryphal provenance, and it is known that Brown left Christ Church without a degree, moving to Kingston upon Thames where he stayed three years as a schoolmaster, and later to London, where he took up residence on Aldersgate Street in the Grub Street district.

Brown made a modest living from his writing in Latin, French and English, in addition to offering services of translation. He refrained however from ever attaching himself to a patron, and expressed contempt toward those who did so. He pursued a libertine lifestyle, and his satirical works gained him several enemies in their subjects.

His best-known works, apart from the quatrain, are probably Amusements Serious and Comical, calculated for the Meridian of London (1700) and Letters from the Dead to the Living (1702), although his writings were quite prolific. Several works of the period whose author is unknown are suspected to be his.

Toward the end of his life he began to regret the licentiousness with which he had lived it, and on his deathbed he secured from his publisher (one Sam Briscoe) a promise that any posthumously published works would be censored of "all prophane, undecent passages". The promise was promptly reneged upon.

Many of Brown's works went unpublished until his death, and the publication date of many is in question, as is his stature as a writer. Contemporary opinion was mixed; Jonathan Swift spoke quite highly of Brown's work, and indeed parts of Gulliver's Travels and other of Swift's works may have been significantly influenced by Brown's writings. On the other hand, those whom Brown mercilessly lampooned during his lifetime understandably did nothing to further his good reputation after his demise.

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica gives this verdict: "He was the author of a great variety of poems, letters, dialogues and lampoons, full of humour and erudition, but coarse and scurrilous. His writings have a certain value for the knowledge they display of low life in London." Presently the best description of Brown's legacy may be that of Joseph Addison, who accorded him the appellation "T-m Br-wn of facetious Memory".

Brown was buried in the grounds of Westminster Abbey.

After tipping off the Barkers about their imminent arrest in West Saint Paul, Brown was demoted from chief of police to the head of the Kidnap Squad, from which he continued to assist criminals. After arranging the Hamm and Bremer kidnappings, Brown was further demoted to detective and, in an unsuccessful effort to restore his reputation, he personally killed his former criminal associate, Homer Van Meter. Brown was finally dismissed from the police force for corruption, but, despite the best efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he was never indicted or prosecuted for his crimes.

He co-founded three biotechnology companies: Oswel Research Products, ATDBio, and Primerdesign. As of January 2016, he is in the board of directors of last two.