Bruce Vermazen Papers, Research Files and Music Instruments on Tom Brown, 1858-2013 | The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music

The collection is organized into two series.

Series 1) Tom Brown Music and Papers, ca. 1900-1954 consists of saxophonist and vaudeville performer Tom Brown's music and papers. This series is organized into six subseries, which are as follows: Sub-series 1) Performance Photographs, Papers, and Materials, which is arranged chronologically; Sub-series 2) Tom Brown Scrabooks and Clippings, which is arranged chronologically; Sub-series 3) Sheet Music, which is arranged alphabetically; Sub-series 4) The Metronome Orchestra Monthly, which arranged chronologically by issue date; Sub-series 5) Audio Recordings, which is arranged alphabetically by recording company; and Sub-series 6) Music Instruments, which is arranged by type of instrument.

Series 2) Bruce Vermazen Personal Papers and Research Files on Tom Brown, 1858-2020 is organized into three subseries: Sub-series 1) Research Files, which is arranged alphabetically by content creator; Sub-series 2) Book Project Files, which is arranged chronologically; and Sub-series 3) Personal Papers, which is arranged chronologically by date of creation.

Vermazen, Bruce
Brown, Tom (1881-1950)

Bruce Vermazen was born in 1940. Vermazen earned his bachelors and masters degrees in Philosophy at the University of Chicago in 1961 and 1962, respectively. In 1967, he received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Stanford University. Soon after, Vermazen became a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California Berkeley. In 1978, he became interested in ragtime and began performing cornet with the Chrysanthemum Ragtime Band. He later served as the band's music director and announcer. In the 1980s, Vermazen began publishing articles on historic ragtime musicians in the San Francisco area including: Jay Roberts, Art Hickman, and the Brown Brothers. In the 1990s, Vermazen began playing cornet with the San Francisco Starlight Orchestra. After retiring in 2000, he published That Moaning Saxophone: The Six Brown Brothers and the Dawning of a Musical Craze. During the early 2000s, Vermazen also became a member of the Hillcrest Wind Ensemble. In 2005, he and Bob Pinsker founded the Heliotrope Ragtime Orchestra, an esemble he still co-leads and performs with to this day. Vermazen currently lives in San Diego with his spouse Juan Miguel Godoy.

Brass Instruments
Cartooning
Interviews
Jazz
Magazines
Minstrel music
Minstrel Show
Musical Instrument Collections
Musical Instrument Makers - United States
Music theater
Vaudeville
Woodwind Instruments

Clothing and Textiles
Correspondence
Newspaper Clippings
Photographs
Scrapbooks
Sheet music
Sound Recordings