[3] While Brown's place of birth has been published as Meridian, Mississippi, Brown told W. Balliett in a 1986 interview published in The New Yorker that she was born in De Kalb, Mississippi, shortly before her father took a position as a pastor in Meridian.

In 1919 her family moved to Chicago, and she began learning piano from her brother who worked with "Pine Top" Smith, playing boogie-woogie for dances.

[6] In 1935, she replaced Fats Waller as pianist on New York radio station WABC.

[3] Brown began to shy away from singing bawdy blues songs because of her deepening religious beliefs and, in 1953, she was baptized, retired from music, and became a nurse in 1959.

Jazz biographies frequently listed her as deceased due to her absence from music.