Ernest Brown (dancer)


Ernest "Brownie" Brown was an African American tap dancer and last surviving member of the Original Copasetics. He was the dance partner of Charles "Cookie" Cook, with whom he performed from the days of vaudeville into the 1960s.
They performed in film, such as the Dorothy Dandridge 1942 "soundie" Cow Cow Boogie, on Broadway in the 1952 musical Kiss Me, Kate, twice at the Newport Jazz Festival, as well in other acts, including "Garbage and His Two Cans" in which they played the garbage cans. Brown's partner for his last 16 years was Reginald McLaughlin, known as Reggio the Hoofer.
Tap performer and historian Jane Goldberg wrote in an e-mail message reported in The New York Times obituary:
He had an amazing sense of "entitlement" in a good way. He always felt he belonged on the stage, shaking his shoulders in that jazzy, goofy move he was known for, even while Honi Coles was cutting Gregory Hines in a tap battle, or other of the greats were there. I don’t think Brownie was tap as much as jazz, and he had a wonderful feeling for jazz.

Brown began performing professionally as a child and headlined at the Roxy, Radio City Music Hall and the Cotton Club in New York, the Latin Casino in Paris and the Palladium in London in the 1930s and 40s. He was the recipient of the American Tap Dance Foundation's Hoofer Award in 2004 and his last performance was at their 2008 Tap City festival in New York with Mr. McLaughlin with whom he appeared in the Chicago Human Rhythm Project Emmy-nominated documentary, JUBA — Masters of Tap and Percussive Dance.
Brown died in Chicago at the age of 93.