Henry Brown
b. 1906, Troy, Tennessee, USA, d. 28 June 1981. Brown moved to St. Louis about 1918, and apart from army service (as a musician) in World War II, he spent his entire musical life there. His economical but highly inventive piano playing usually featured a bouncy, four to the bar chordal bass, and was heard on record both solo and behind a number of St. Louis artists in the '20s and '30s, including Mary Johnson, Alice Moore and the ‘gutbucket’ trombonist Ike Rodgers. He recorded a superb album in 1960 for Paul Oliver. Thereafter he was recorded sporadically, but less successfully, until 1974. He had been in declining health for some time before his death in June 1981.