My name is Joe Holland and I grew up in Shreveport, later lived in and worked out of N.O.  In about 1939-40-41 I lived on the corner of Scovill Court and Dalzell in Shreveport.  Across the street lived a music store owner, "Bubba" Broyles.  Bubba also owned the house next door to his and often accommodated musicians who needed a place to stay and rented the house to them for little or no money.

      I remember Pud there (I have no memory of other family members) and working on Indian Motorcycles in the garage in back of the house.  There were a lot of kids in the area and Pud allowed some of us to hang around, even though he had his gruff and impatient moments.  He would occasionally play his tenor sax and it was magical to hear him.  The incongruity of those grease-covered fingers moving over the keys and producing such sounds was apparent, even to a dumb nine-year-old kid like me.

     I always wondered why he wasn't making lots of money playing somewhere instead of laboring over motorcycles.  Obviously, I didn't know the realities of the music business in the 1930's.  Whenever he had the time, Pud liked to hang around Broyle's Music Store to hear the latest gossip from traveling musicians.  Among the other guys who were in and out: "Snoozer" Quinn, the great guitarist; Bob Hogan, tenor sax; Merton Schmolke, trumpet, and dozens of others.

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     As you probably know Snoozer Quinn was one of the greatest guitar men of the century.  Django Rinehart would have loved him.  He was a sweet guy and everybody loved him.  The story I always heard about him was that he had played for Paul Whiteman for many years.  On the way to or from an engagement, driving too fast, he had an accident which resulted in near-fatal head injuries and he ended up in a Newark hospital.  Supposedly, Whiteman contacted the leading neurosurgeon in New York and asked him to save Snoozer's life.  His life was saved and he played well but foreverafter he had a badly deformed head.  Wherever he went, wherever he played, he tried to stay out of the light so that people wouldn't see him.  I was fortunate enough to work many gigs with Snoozer and I learned a lot about subtleties--playing softly with brushes--from him and your dad.  It served me well: I began working with the hotel-style bands, not good jazz but they paid well and we got to live in the hotels and live a nice life.

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     I attended Creswell Elementary and started learning to play snare drum in the school band.  I also began hanging out at Bubba's Music Store which was in the entrance to the lobby of the Inn Hotel on Milam St., and all the guys treated me very well.  At some point in that era, Louis Armstrong was having trouble with a club-owner, I think in Chicago, and came to Shreveport until things cooled off.  I think he stayed at Pud's house, but I can't be sure; I do know that Louis spent many days hanging around at Broyle's Music and playing his horn.  [I picked up a bio of Louis which mentions his problem with the club-owner but makes no mention of his being in Shreveport.] To cut this short: I went on and learned to play reasonably well and got a set of drums from Bubba.  The timing was good because every drummer in town got drafted and I started playing gigs with Pud, Bob Hogan, Archie Laurent (Piano) and Steve Grunhart, the seccy.  of Local 116, AFM.  (The Union office was in the basement of the Inn Hotel.) All the guys, Pud included, were understanding and patient with me and helped me learn to play.  I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I was not to go near the bar, smoke anything, and "Leave those girls alone!" I managed everything except that last one but, to this day, I don't drink or smoke.

     Speaking of the house on Dalzell, in addition to the front porch, there was a screened-in back porch which, I think, housed Louis during his stay.  That would have been risky, if you consider race relations at the time.  One of the greatest things I learned from Pud Brown was that the only thing that counts is the quality of the person and race didn't matter.  I was among the first white musicians to work openly with black musicians in many cities: New Orleans, Jackson, Miss., El Paso, Tex., Tacoma and Seattle, Wash., Memphis and Little Rock. On the weekend that L.R.  was "occupied" by federal troops in 1957 I was playing with black musicians in a popular local private club and it was packed with all kinds of people, including some of the troops.  We were openly threatened but we just went on playing and nothing happened.  I was never a "cause seeker" and I wasn't looking for trouble, I just enjoyed working with fine musicians.

     I happened upon this site one night when I had some friends over, most of whom had resisted getting into computers.  I kept telling them about how you can type in anything and get 100 references about it.  Half-joking, I said, "Look, I knew this guy when I was a kid, Pud Brown, and I'll bet there'll be information available about him." No one was more astonished than I was when all of this popped up on the screen.  My apologies for the length, but I was so grateful to find all the information about the legendary Pud.


Thanks, Joe Holland. Little Rock, Arkansas