Eddie Brown (July 27, ?--December 28, 1992) performed for more than 50 years in a career that spanned the U.S., Canada, and Africa. Eddie was discovered at age 16 by Bill Robinson during a tap dance contest held in Eddie's hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. Eddie was a flash dancer at that time, much like one of his uncles. He caught Mr. Robinson's attention by performing "Doin' the New Lowdown." Eddie had pieced the famous routine together from a recording and by seeing movies of Bojangles. At age 18, he joined the Bill Robinson Revue at New York's famed Apollo Theater. He remained with the show from 1933-1939.
Eddie came into rhythm tap while working with The Bill Robinson Revue. When he was done with the show, he would go to Eddie Small's Paradise where he would be a guest performer. He would do his usual up-tempo flash dancing, but remembered seeing some dancers using a moderate tempo with different and strange rhythms, "More beats to the bar." When approached for work they turned him down because they saw that he didn't understand what they were doing. "I left and I woodshedded for 3 weeks. After, I found out that rhythm was flash dancing cut in half. Twelve choruses doing flash is like doing 2 or 3 choruses of rhythm. Double-up." After those 3 weeks of experimentation and discovery Eddie returned to Eddie Small's club. The band began playing his usual up tempo music and his time Eddie stopped them,"Nope...stop. Not there." "Where?' "I say, put it here [starts singing a slower, swinging "Back Home Indiana"]. I did my two choruses of rhythm. By me being a flash dancer I found out that I could do the same steps and it worked out beautifully. I went on from there creating, creating, creating." Eddie had learned that "The things I did in flash dancing coincided with the rhythm--man there was no end." By the time the show tour arrived in San Francisco Eddie wasn't doing flash anymore. "Everything was rhythm--down to earth rhythm. And I had the advantage over other dancers because I started out as a flash dancer."
Falling in love with San Francisco, Eddie decided to stay. Where he had been and would return to being a soloist, Eddie teamed up with drummer Dave Tuff. "He was out of sight! We did an act answering each other." Just drums and tap. They performed at the Barbary Coast Club in North Beach. Eddie preferred being a soloist because he was always experimenting and trying to add to the rhythm he was developing--"it took all my time." Prior to this duo Eddie had also performed as part of the tap trio Brown, Gibson, and Reed (Carl "Busboy" Gibson & Jerry Reed), only to later split off into The Mad Cats of Rhythm (Eddie and Jerry). He later appeared with Billie Holiday and Joe Turner at the Savoy in Art Tatum's show in 1945, and with jazz greats Dizzy Gillespie, Cal Tjader, George Shearing, the Jimmie Lunc