Ernest ‘Brownie’ Brown, 93, vaudevillian and tap dancer
WASHINGTON - Ernest “Brownie’’ Brown, a vaudeville entertainer and a founding member of a tap dance ensemble called the Copasetics that helped keep the dance style alive long after its golden age, died of prostate cancer Aug. 21 at a nursing home in Burbank, Ill. He was 93.
An impish spitfire of a performer, Mr. Brown teamed with Charlie “Cookie’’ Cook around 1930 to create a comedy, tumbling, and tap dance act that shared stages with Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and other leading entertainers. Cook and Brown, as the partnership was called, headlined shows at Harlem’s Cotton Club, the Palladium in London, and the Latin Casino in Paris.
Mr. Brown, not quite 5 feet tall, was the mischievous clown, while the tall and lanky Cook, known for his Russian floor dancing, played the straight-laced grouch. Often their shows featured Mr. Brown being tossed around like a rag doll, only to finish in an impressive pose.
“Brownie can fall like a champion,’’ Cook, who died in 1991, once told an interviewer. Authors Marshall and Jean Stearns wrote in their book “Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance’’ (1968) that Cook and Mr. Brown’s act “looks like bone-crushing mayhem, but it is actually carefully rehearsed dancing and acrobatics, with tiny Brown emerging triumphant at stage center in the finale doing a wildly satirical version of the twist.’’
In 1949, Mr. Brown helped found the Copasetics, a tap fraternity launched just after the death of celebrated tap dancer Bill “Bojangles’’ Robinson to honor his legacy. The group took its name from one of Robinson’s most frequently used expressions: When someone asked how he was doing, Robinson often replied, “Everything’s copasetic,’’ meaning very satisfactory.
The Copasetics included some of the era’s best-known hoofers, such as Charles “Honi’’ Coles and Cholly Atkins, and staged lively shows that showcased the dancers’ individual strengths. Mr. Brown was the last surviving member of the original troupe.
The Copasetics were “the dancers that laid the foundation for all this new generation that’s coming,’’ said Reginald “Reggio the Hoofer’’ McLaughlin, a tap performer and educator who trained with Mr. Brown. “They’re the ones who really held the tradition together.’’
Later, Cook and Brown performed on Broadway as a specialty dance act in a 1952 production of the Cole Porter musical “Kiss Me, Kate.’’ They danced together until the 1960s, but performance opportunities became harder to find. Mr. Brown went on to work as a messenger in New York.
Last year, the team of Cook and Brown was inducted into the American Tap Dance Foundation’s Tap Dance Hall of Fame.
Ernest Brown was born April 25, 1916, in Chicago, the youngest of nine siblings. By 12 he was performing with a vaudeville troupe called Sarah Venable’s “Mammy and Her Picks.’’ Cook was in the same act, and they soon left to work as a team. Initially, the duo called themselves Garbage and His Two Cans, switching to Cook and Mr. Brown around 1930.
Mr. Brown’s marriage to Hazel Coates Brown ended in divorce. Another wife, Patricia Brown, died in 1989. He leaves a daughter from his first marriage, Barbara Junkins of Chicago; a sister; four grandchildren; and a great-grandson.
Later on in his 14 years at the bank, Mr. Brown occasionally took part in a gala or revue-style performance. He was fully lured out of retirement in the 1990s when he moved back to Chicago, befriended McLaughlin, and began giving the younger man dance lessons.
Soon McLaughlin got a call from an organizer of the Chicago Tap Festival saying they had contacted his partner about having their act perform in the show. McLaughlin said, “I was like, ‘Partner? What partner?’ ’’ And when the organizer answered “Brownie,’’ that was how he found out that Mr. Brown saw him as an equal and wanted to share the stage with him.