Jazz on the Lake
Tom Brown played Jass on the Lake & steamers crossing to the North Shore 1888-1958 - Tom Brown Brown claimed to be the first to use the word "Jass" to descibe the music that was coming out of New Orleans. For a while, both black and white bands had found plenty of seasonal employment at the beachfront restaurants, pavilions, and cabarets lining the south shore of 635-square-mile Lake Pontchartrain, less than five miles north of the city. Tom Brown's band was even one of the few that got to play on the excursion steamers that took tourists to the more exclusive north shore. But Pontchartrain's heyday ran in cycles, subject to sometimes violent weather and changing fashion. It ended forever when, in the mid-1920s, construction began on a seawall to extend the existing shoreline out several hundred feet, protecting it from storms and flooding--and leaving the former resort area stranded inland. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sudhalter-chords.html Like most early White New Orleans Jazz musicians, trombonist Tom Brown was a veteran of Papa Jack Laine's Reliance. Brown's Dixieland Jass Band consisted of Tom Brown on trombone; his brother Steve on bass, Ray Lopez on cornet; William Lambert on drums; Arnold Loyacano on guitar; and Larry Sheilds on clarinet. Once in New York, Brown's clarinetist, Larry Sheilds exchanged jobs with Yellow Nuñez who had just been fired from The Original Dixieland Jass Band. Nuñez joined Browns band. In New Orleans he played with Johnny Bayersdorffer and his Jazzola Novelty Orchestra. Source: http://www.redhotjazz.com/brown.html