Euday Bowman was the paternal descendant of an early 18th-century German immigrant named Baumann.

[3] Though several books list Bowman's birth year according to a tradition as 1887, official records show his birthdate as November 9, 1886.

Although many sources indicate Bowman lost a leg when he tried to hop a train, that event happened to his cousin and resulted in a lawsuit ultimately decided by the Texas Supreme Court.

[4] In his teens and early twenties, Bowman traveled around as pianist, and was also an arranger for popular orchestras.

He lived together with his sister, Miss Mary M. Bowman, who wrote a part of Twelfth Street Rag.

Many years later he regained the copyright, having lost out on the royalties earned by the publisher through the many successful interpretations of that rag by artists like Louis Armstrong (1927), Bennie Moten (1927), Duke Ellington (1931), and Pee Wee Hunt (1948).