Pete Brown (jazz musician) with Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge. His last appearance was in 1960 with Dizzy Gillespie. Brown was the teacher of Cecil Payne. Pete Brown (jazz musician) James Ostend "Pete" Brown (November 9, 1906, Baltimore, Maryland - September 20, 1963, New York City, New York) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and bandleader. Brown learned to play piano, trumpet, and saxophone while young. He played in New York with Bernie Robinson's orchestra in 1928, and played from 1928 to 1934 with Charlie Skeets. In 1937 he worked in the band of John Kirby; for several years in the 1930s he worked
Dizzy Gillespie a session led by Coleman Hawkins with Gillespie as a featured sideman on February 16, 1944 (Apollo), the first formal recording of bebop. He appeared in recordings by the Billy Eckstine band and started recording prolifically as a leader and sideman in early 1945. He was not content to let bebop sit in a niche of small groups in small clubs. A concert by one of his small groups in New York's Town Hall on June 22, 1945 presented bebop to a broad audience; recordings of it were released in 2005. He started to organize big bands in late 1945.