Ernest Brown, Last Member of the Original Tapping Copasetics, Dies at 93
Ernest Brown, the last surviving and most diminutive member of the Original Copasetics, an ensemble of tap-dancing stars formed in 1949 that helped to revive the art of tap, died on Friday in Chicago. He was 93 and lived in Chicago.
His death was confirmed by Reginald McLaughlin, a tap protégé known as Regio the Hoofer, with whom Mr. Brown performed for 16 years.
The Original Copasetics was a fraternity of vividly individual tap dancers, each with his own casually authoritative style and specialty. Its shows throbbed with the street-corner improvisation at the heart of American tap dance and hinted at the revues and film musicals through which tap and the dancers had gained new audiences.
Formed on the death of Bill Bojangles Robinson, the international tap star, the group took its name from Robinson’s familiar observation that “everything is copasetic,” or perfect.
The group was formed in part as a survival mechanism for its dancers and for the art of tap, regrouping often as the years (and “tap revivals”) went by. The groups played a crucial role in the tap boom of the 1970s and ’80s.
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His death was confirmed by Reginald McLaughlin, a tap protégé known as Regio the Hoofer, with whom Mr. Brown performed for 16 years.
The Original Copasetics was a fraternity of vividly individual tap dancers, each with his own casually authoritative style and specialty. Its shows throbbed with the street-corner improvisation at the heart of American tap dance and hinted at the revues and film musicals through which tap and the dancers had gained new audiences.
Formed on the death of Bill Bojangles Robinson, the international tap star, the group took its name from Robinson’s familiar observation that “everything is copasetic,” or perfect.
The group was formed in part as a survival mechanism for its dancers and for the art of tap, regrouping often as the years (and “tap revivals”) went by. The groups played a crucial role in the tap boom of the 1970s and ’80s.