Biography
Tom Gerunovitch (born August 23, 1900 - died 30 June, 1975) was a popular California based bandleader during the late 1920s and 1930s. His first recordings were released under the name of Tom Gerunovitch and his Roof Garden Orchestra in 1928 and 1929. Sometime in 1929 he shortened his last name to Gerun. In the late 1930s up until about 1959 he was the co-owner and manager of the Bal Tabarin night club at 1025 Columbus Avenue (at Chestnut Street) in San Francisco (now called Bimbo's 365 Club).
Tom Gerun, owner and originator of his nationally famous "Tom Gerun's Orchestra," was a talented native son of San Francisco, known throughout the country as a popular orchestra leader and successful composer his father being Stephen Gerunovich, a San Francisco pioneer. He attended the public schools of this city and was a student at the Polytechnic high school when, at the age of sixteen and one half years, his skill as a violinist brought him an engagement to play with the orchestra at the famous Portola Louvre in San Francisco.
Soon he was playing in such places as Tait's, the Palace Hotel and the Winter Garden, and at the age of nineteen years he organized his own orchestra and toured the Pacific coast. On returning to California he played an engagement at Sweet's in Oakland, after which he made another tour of the Pacific coast.
Next he filled an engagement at the Roof Garden in San Francisco and subsequently made two tours with his orchestra, covering the entire United States and playing at the Congress Hotel in Chicago, the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, the New Jefferson Hotel in St. Louis, the Warman Hotel in Washington, D. C., the Schroeder Hotel in Milwaukee and numerous other hostelries, also having two engagements in New York city.
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