Bruce
Vermazen is the author of That Moaning
Saxophone: The Six Brown Brothers and the Dawning of a Musical Craze (Oxford
University Press, 2004).
Now retired from a career as a Professor of Philosophy at the University
of California, Berkeley, he became interested in ragtime when he joined the
Chrysanthemum Ragtime Band in 1978.
As cornetist, announcer, and finally musical director of the
Chrysanthemums, he pursued ragtime research as a sideline and ultimately
published articles on San Francisco musicians Jay Roberts and Art Hickman as
well as the Brown Brothers.
For a decade, he played cornet with the San Francisco Starlight
Orchestra.
Currently, he lives in San Diego and is trying to find out more about the
saxophone craze.
In
2005 Bruce and co-founder, Bob
Pinsker, formed the Heliotrope
Ragtime Orchestra.
