Ernest "Brownie" Brown (April 25, 1916 – August 21, 2009) 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, and of Reginald McLaughlin, also known as "Reggio the Hoofer," from 1996 until Brown's death in 2009.
Cookie and Brownie had developed a dancing and acrobatic routine combining comedy and slapstick humor with sophisticated choreography, character dynamics, and timing.
[2] Brownie appeared in the documentary Great Feats of Feet (1977) and Steps in Time (1979), and he taught at the historic By Word of Foot tap festival at the Village Gate (1980).
He also performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Tappin' Uptown: A New Tap Musical; at City College's Aaron Davis Hall in An Evening with Charles Cook and Friends (1984); at Chicago's Goodman Theatre in Jane Goldberg's Shoot Me While I'm Happy (1985), at the Boston Opera House in The Great Tap Dance Reunion (1988), and at the Studio Museum of Harlem in Cookie and Friends (1989).
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.