![]() In 1989 Brown participated in a roundtable discussion with fellow African American entertainers for the PBS-TV show Frontline, in a segment called "Talented, Black and Blue." The group discussed the racial climate between white stars and black acts in the early days of the stage. ![]() Other acts Brown worked with included Beige & Brown and the Entertainers, sharing bills with Sarah Vaughan, among many others. His next act, the Speed Kings, also a trio, was known for its precision and rapid-fire tap dancing, acrobatics, and jive it toured the United States and Canada for several years with the Brown Skin Models and the Rudy Vallee Show. Moves from the Autumn Follies to Duke Ellingtonīrown began dancing for an audience at age sixteen with two friends at an annual high school show called the "Autumn Follies." The three performers, who called themselves Three Aces, began touring the United States "We'd teach one another, 'If you show me your step, I'll show you this step.'" They danced, he added, to the sounds of bebop era in jazz. "The guys around my time, we all learned on the street … Never classes," Brown told radio host Liane Hansen in a 1999 interview for National Public Radio. Brown died in his sleep on May 7, 2002.īorn James Richard Brown in Baltimore, Maryland on May 17, 1913, Brown was the son of William Brown and Marie Ella Otho-Brown. Brown made his name touring internationally as a soloist with Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, and his own groups, the Hoofers and the Copacetics. Brown's career spanned more than seven decades, from vaudeville to Broadway to an appearance in the Hollywood film Cotton Club. ![]() One of the most prominent figures in the world of tap dance, Brown is cited as an inventor of the art form, and certainly an influence on later entertainers such as Sammy Davis Jr. What the interviewer was likely getting at was that it was Brown himself who defined funky and not in the off-putting and smelly sense of the word. According to his website, when asked by an interviewer to define "funky," tap dancer, teacher, and choreographer James "Buster" Brown would reply, "Funky? That's when you look like it smells bad." He would wrinkle his nose and do a funny dance, bringing laughter to anyone who was in the room.
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