Brun Campbell and his personal ragtime history as narrated to the world have been at the center of everything from reverence to ridicule since after his death. Never having actually made a full living as a performer or composer, he nonetheless provided a somewhat credible link to Scott Joplin and his peers, one of the earliest or only non-Black pupils, or as often stated, disciples, of the famous composer of Maple Leaf Rag. This biography will not overtly attempt to either feed or assuage any controversy, but merely address some variances. It will try, as best as possible, to sort out the facts of Campbell's life, and be as clear as it is feasibly possible on what was relayed by Campbell as opposed to what was known about him. Note that much of what was relayed of his life exists in recordings and interviews made in the early 1940s, four decades after the fact, and that a number variances are found even between those declarations by Campbell, which can be attributed to either memory issues or some fanciful embellishment acquired over the years.

Sanford Brunson Campbell was born in early 1884 in Oberlin, Kansas to Luther E. Campbell of Wisconsin and Lulu "Emilie" A. Bourquin of Indiana. A brother, Harold A., was born in Oberlin, Kansas on July 15, 1891. Luther (sometimes later referred to as Lou or Lew) was only 17 when his first son was born, and he did not yet have a steady trade. Life was not always easy at that time on the northwest Kansas prairie, so diversions were welcome. The family also moved often, stopping for a time in St. Joseph, Missouri, after Harold was born. Possibly looking for adventure and opportunity, Luther was one of many who attempted to secure property when the Cherokee Strip Land Run commenced in September of 1893 in what would become a part of northern Oklahoma. While he failed to secure anything, Mr. Campbell settled the family near the starting point in Arkansas City, Kansas. Between 1893 and 1900, according to various city directories and records, the family was also in Guthrie in Oklahoma Territory, as well as Oklahoma City and El Reno, before returning to Kansas and Arkansas City.

During this time Luther tried his hand as a traveling salesman, often bringing goods into the newly settled territory. He eventually abandoned that for a steadier career, and became a barber. Luther played some guitar and appropriately sang in what would now be considered a barbershop quartet. Lulu picked at the banjo as well. It would seem obvious that during this period Sanford would develop an interest in the piano. By the mid 1890s he received some musical training, equipping him enough to grasp the fundamentals of performance and structure, and become a competent player and reader. The family is shown in both the 1895 Kansas census and the 1900 Federal census in Arkansas City, the latter with Luther employed as a barber, while Sanford and Luther were still in school. This is important because the data reported in the 1900 census is a bit at odds with Campbell's recorded recollections.

This is Brun's story as relayed in the 1940s. It was in 1898, when Campbell would have been around 14, that he said he ran off from southern Kansas, finding his way to Oklahoma City. He then played for a while for the Armstrong-Byrd Music Company. It was possibly in that capacity that he met Otis Saunders (possibly Sanders), one of Joplin's colleagues. Saunders reportedly handed him a manuscript of Maple Leaf Rag to read through, which depending on the exact time frame was either nearing publication or had just recently been published. A manuscript would have constituted a hand written copy of Joplin's original, and some minor doubts could be cast on this possibility. Just the same, Campbell played through the copy and quickly became enamored with the soon to be famous rag. After returning home he ventured to Sedalia and became friends with Joplin and Saunders while taking lessons from the former. At the end of his time there, Saunders, or in some accounts, Scott Joplin, was supposed to have handed the teenager an 1897 silver half dollar, telling him that this was the date that the composer wrote his first "original rag." Then he went back home to Kansas, musically changed forever.

That Sanford was listed as still in school in Kansas in early 1900 does not totally enforce the credibility of this tale, or even the less likely scenario that he returned home after this journey to Sedalia simply to attend high school. Also, if the year it happened was indeed 1898, there is the matter of a 14-year-old surviving on his own at that time, including provisions for lodging and food, although that was not unheard of. Just the same, here is a more likely scenario. Please note this is an educated opinion gathered from known facts and likely probabilities. That he traveled to Oklahoma in 1898 is likely, albeit for a short time. He and a friend of his, the son of a local doctor, went to Oklahoma City in 1898 (this was possibly the period in which the Campbell family was living there) for a celebration, probably for Oklahoma Day on September 16, 1898. He became separated from his friend and ended up at Armstrong-Byrd where he bided his time playing through music. Whether Saunders came by and heard him or not is still questionable, although he certainly may have received some complements and advice from others while he was there. It is likely that once reunited with his friend that the pair returned home.

Instead of going to Sedalia at that time, it is more plausible that Campbell left for Missouri in the summer of 1900 at age 16, after the family was back in Arkansas City, and once school was out. Then the story would have logically progressed from there. In his autobiography Brun states, "I had been taught how to play by Scott Joplin in 1898 when I was 15 years old." As he was not fifteen until at least 1899, and that Joplin was not at all well known until after Maple Leaf Rag was published, and then only gradually, this further amplifies the plausibility that Campbell instead studied with Joplin in 1900. Another possibility suggested by They All Played Ragtime is that he may have spent the summer of 1899 in Sedalia, since it mentions his returning to Kansas after his time with Saunders and Joplin, and then returned the following summer.

Otis Saunders/Sanders (whose true identity is currently a mystery since he does not appear in any census) was indeed involved with helping Joplin get Maple Leaf Rag heard, played and widely promoted. However, it may potentially be considered unusual, based on data from interviews and knowledge of the past, that a mulatto pianist who was at least a decade older, would approach a white youngster in a music store to have him read a manuscript. It is more likely that the interchange involved Saunders giving Campbell a published copy of the rag, hoping to have it played locally and promoted for sale. In a 1945 Record Changer article, Brun contradicts his earlier story, saying that he learned the rag personally from Joplin as it was first written, a tale which seems even less likely given other facts. To further confound things, the Maple Leaf Club for which the rag was named and dedicated would not open until late November of 1898, meaning that Saunders would have been carrying a manuscript that was either unnamed or had a working title. So we can't be sure what Campbell saw or heard.

This time line still works with the 1900 census findings, and with Saunders going to Sedalia in mid 1900 or even early 1901 when Joplin was still there, and following him to St. Louis in 1901 as well. A further reinforcement of this contention is that Campbell became a barber like his father, a trade better learned in his mid-teens rather than at age 12 or 13, just prior to when he allegedly left home. It also indicates that he maintained better family ties than the previous scenario might suggest. The element of Campbell having seen the rag in manuscript form before it was published would indeed make for a more colorful story, but it is hard to confirm, while other known facts appear to diminish (but not eliminate) this possibility.

There is evidence to support Campbell being in Sedalia around 1900. The extent of tutelage he received from Joplin or anybody else there is unknown. Sedalia was a fairly tolerant town in terms of race relations, so that the 16 year old might have been seen in a black neighborhood (and perhaps a bit less likely in one of the Negro clubs along the north side of Sedalia's Main Avenue near Ohio Street) would not necessarily have raised too many eyebrows. Campbell later claimed to have been Joplin's only white pupil, although there is little in the way of hard evidence to fully support even this. Given his playing style, what would he have learned from Joplin at that time? Perhaps it was the fundamentals of syncopation or composition, or even notation. Campbell's recordings reflect more of a folk ragtime style that would have been equally indigenous to central Missouri, convincingly suggesting that much of what he learned was influenced by a wide variety of players less skilled than Joplin. On Joplin's playing, he variously said that Joplin was a master at playing his own rags, which needed no embellishment, and that while Joplin was a competent pianist, his playing wasn't going to "set the world on fire."

While in St. Louis, and later in Kansas City, Campbell was able to pick up work in saloons and sporting houses. It was there that he became familiar with the playing of Arthur Marshall, Scott Hayden, Tom Turpin, Tony Williams, Melford Alexander, Jim and Ida Hastings, Louis Chauvin and Charley Thompson, claiming to also have taken lessons with at least some of them. This is what he said of their playing in general. "None of the original pianists played ragtime the way it was written. They played their own style. Some played march time, fast time, slow time and some played ragtime blues style. But none of them lost the melody and if you knew the player and heard him a block away you could name him by his ragtime style." Of the St. Louis crowd he claimed that Thompson was the best of them, eclipsing even the short-lived Chauvin who was known for his pianistic prowess. Campbell eventually fulfilled some of his wanderlust by traveling as an itinerant pianist throughout Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, and points south and southwest of the region, allegedly billing himself as "The Ragtime Kid". Variations on that include "The Original Ragtime Kid," "The Dude," the curious "The Indian Kid," "Kid Campbell," and "Brunnie Campbell."

Brun played anywhere he could find, including honky-tonks, barrelhouses (which had tables made of beer barrels), white brothels, pool halls, and riverboats. This is most likely the time that he developed his unique playing style, absorbing the influences of other pianists he encountered, and the period in which he wrote the bulk of his compositions that were recorded in the early 1940s. But there is again some question about how long he was on the road, and whether or not he maintained a home base. Among those he claims to have met, and likely did at some point, include Tony Jackson and Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton. Given that Morton was six years his junior, it was not so plausible that they met before even 1904 when Morton was fourteen and first ventured up to St. Louis. However, in the 1940s Campbell stated: "I would like to give the late 'Jelly Roll' Morton, of New Orleans, credit for his early contribution to ragtime, which was King Porter Stomp, of 1906. He named it after Porter King, a great Negro pianist of the Gulf Coast. Another great Negro pianist of New Orleans was Tony Jackson, and he could out-play the great 'Jelly Roll' Morton. The music these great Negro composers developed will live forever, and I am proud of the fact I was associated with them at the beginning." It seems more probable that Campbell would have developed a relationship with Morton when they were both in Los Angeles in the late 1910s, but either scenario is possible.

During his time on the road he claims to have played for many luminaries from politicians to outlaws, of which some of the claims have been considered a stretch by other historians. Among those he claimed to have performed for include President Teddy Roosevelt, Buffalo Bill (William F. Cody), Governor Thompson B. Ferguson of what was then still Indian Territory before it was Oklahoma, minstrel leader Lew Dockstader, O.K. Corral veteran and lawman Bat Masterson, and famed outlaws Frank James (Jesse's brother), Cole Younger, Emmett Dalton and Henry Starr. He stated that his greatest thrill was playing Maple Leaf Rag at the Kerfoot Hotel in El Reno, Oklahoma for Bill Cody's friend and rival, Pawnee Bill (Gordon Lillie). He and his wife, May Manning, were the proprietors of the Pawnee Bill Historical Wild West Show, which was most often held at their ranch at Pawnee, Oklahoma. In They All Played Ragtime, Campbell said that "Twenty years later I met him in Tulsa and he asked me to play it again."

The 1905 Kansas census showed Campbell (erroneously listed as Branson, not Brunson) once again living with his brother and parents in Arkansas City. It could be that he was discouraged during his travels either by a limited skill set or the popularity of the talented black performers that populated the region. There is less of a possibility that he just happened to be visiting the day that census was taken, given that he is shown to be working as a barber, not a musician. At some point around 1907 to 1908 Campbell claims that he retired from the playing life (it was likely earlier), and was married to G. Ethel Campbell (little is known about her). He then settled in to his father's line of work, albeit now in Tulsa, Oklahoma where Luther and Lulu had also moved. Sanford (he was invariably listed in each Federal census as Sanford B.) and Ethel are shown there in the 1910 census living on Second Street, with Campbell working as a barber in his own shop. There is no indication that he was working as a musician by this time, although it remains a possibility.

Brun, as he was more often referred to by this time, continued to live in Tulsa for most of the decade. However, his first marriage broke up within a couple years. On May 14, 1913 he applied for a marriage license in Tulsa, this time with Lena Louise Burrough of Fort Smith, Arkansas. She was 18-years-old to his 29 (he claimed to be 27). It is assumed they were soon married as on his 1918 draft card he lists a "Mrs. Sanford B. Campbell," although living at a different address than his. He was at 111 E. Fourth and Lena was living at 110 E. Independence. Brun was working as a barber for Hodges and Clements. Under the claims for potential disqualification due to physical issues, he claimed he was "Shot through joint of big toe in right foot." The story behind this is unclear, but given his earlier life as an itinerant pianist, it is very plausible. They were likely divorced soon after this as Campbell is next seen in Venice, California in 1920. He was now living with his parents and brother again. Luther was the sales manager for a coffee company, Harold worked as what appears to be a traveling salesman in the grocery business, and Brun had opened his own barber shop in Venice. The community had been founded just west of Los Angeles on the shore a couple of decades prior, with the gimmick of having recreated the essence of Venice, Italy, complete with canals and gondolas. Only a couple of the canals exist today, but Venice Beach is still a popular destination for locals. Brun remained there for the rest of his life.

Campbell was married a third time, either in the mid to late 1920s to Marjorie (May) Campbell. According to the 1930 census they had three daughters, Dorothy (c.1919), Louise (c.1923) and Patricia (c.1925). Given that all three girls were born in Oklahoma where their mother was from, it is evident he had acquired them in the marriage.

Brun Campbell with his display of his first ragtime teacher's works.

May was also a previous acquaintance from his time in Tulsa. While both Brun and May claim to have been first married 12 years prior, this is suspect as he shows as married in the 1920 census, yet there was no wife living with him in Venice. The 1930 record also shows that the father for all three girls was born in Kansas, which, as it turns out, was an error, meaning that Campbell was clearly not their father, so he had remarried in the late 1920s. The 1940 census shows Sanford and Marjorie with Louise and Patricia, again with an Oklahoma birthplace for all of the females. His occupation was listed as the manager and barber in a barber shop, which was his own.

Brun's shop was at 711 Venice Boulevard next to the Venice City Hall. In interviews in the 1940s when he was being "rediscovered," he claimed to have not touched a piano through the 1920s and 1930s. However, Norm Pierce, a barber supply salesman in during the depression who later owned a San Francisco record shop, said he visited Brun's shop frequently in the 1930s, and that there was a piano in the back room of the shop that Campbell played often. This kept his playing chops in good shape, which came in handy in the early 1940s. There was a revival of 1920s jazz in the works, led at this time by Lu Watters and Wally Rose in San Francisco. In 1942, just as World War Two was underway, they recorded several tracks as the Yerba Buena Jazz Band, reviving the works of Joseph "King" Oliver and others, throwing in a little ragtime for good measure. While the progression of this revival and the YBJB was interrupted by the war, jazz enthusiasts and writers started seeking out the originals from this era. Paul E. Affeldt started visiting Brun around this time, and said that when he'd visit the shop and ask the barber to tell him something about the ragtime years, the "Closed" sign would go up and the stories would come forth in great numbers. Campbell also had a number of home-recorded acetate records dating possibly back to the 1910s. Trombonist Turk Murphy, as quoted by pianist and historian Terry Waldo in This is Ragtime, said, "You could always tell the guys who were going to see him, because of their haircuts. He wasn't really that good of a barber, but he played good ragtime."

Hoping to do some good on this new interest in old music, Brun set out to do a favor for an old friend. A bit after he had helped to author a two part article in The Record Changer magazine in 1945, he had heard that Lottie Joplin, Scott Joplin's widow, was going through hard times.

One of Campbell's private issue records with a declarative statement concerning his role.

So Brun recorded Maple Leaf Rag in his shop on an old $50 upright he says he refurbished, simply so the royalties would go to help her out of her situation. He recorded for Ray Avery's Echoes record company, and also did some sides for Watters' own West Coast label (eventually acquired by Lester Koenig's Good Time Jazz and then Fantasy Records). Somewhere during this time period and prior to 1947, Campbell composed and recorded Chestnut Street in the 90's, which remains his best known and most often played rag. Many of the other pieces he ended up recording around 1947 had a similar and earthy style, but there were also quotes or paraphrases of well-known rags of the past. In some cases, he recorded snippets of a minute or less that are considered potential fragments of a larger piece, or perhaps just a riff that inspired him. Each of the privately recorded discs that Brunson cut were initially released on one-sided records because, as Campbell later told writer Floyd Levin, "If they want to hear two tunes, let them buy two records."

Based on his growing fame among jazz fans and his links to Scott Joplin, it was inevitable that Campbell would be interviewed in 1949 by Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis for their upcoming book They All Played Ragtime. Brun also penned his own autobiography which now resides at Fisk University, a largely black institution in Nashville, Tennessee. A release of his previous recordings as well as the publication of They All Played Ragtime in 1950 brought new found fame to many previously unsung composers and performers, ranging from Joseph F. Lamb and Charley Thompson to Brun Campbell. Another researcher and fan who exchanged mail with Campbell was then high school student, later historian (the late) Mike Montgomery. He was among the first of the ragtime revivalists to have learned and then spread Campbell's full name to other ragtime writers.

However, Campbell was not able to revel in his growing fame for long. Scott Joplin's only white student passed on in late 1952, leaving behind a legacy of unique views of the ragtime era, as well as a number of still unanswered questions. Affeldt eventually acquired many of the acetates cut by Campbell, and released a pair of records on his Euphonic label, named after Affeldt's favorite Joplin Rag. It became clear to those who listened to these tracks that while other players, at least those who continued working in that capacity into the 1920s and 1930s, changed their style to fit the times, Campbell retained what he had learned in those early days of ragtime. In that regard, his 1940s performances are perhaps among the most authentic of those done during that time, giving us a good view into what some saloon piano players may have sounded like during those glory days in St. Louis. For all of those questions left behind by Campbell, the answers that we know of, including his performances, are still a treasured look into a time long past.