Frank Brower
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frank Brower (c. 1824–June 4, 1874) was an American blackface performer active in the mid-19th century. He began his career doing blackface performances in circuses and theatres. His act was well enough known that Master Juba (William Henry Lane) did an impression of Brower dancing.
In January, 1843, Brower was out of work in New York City. He teamed up with three other blackface performers—Dan Emmett, Richard Pelham, and Billy Whitlock—to form the Virginia Minstrels, the first group of blackface performers to put on a full minstrel show. Brower played the bones and wrote some songs for the troupe, including "Old Joe" in 1844.
In 1854, Brower took the role of Uncle Tom in the Bowery Theatre's staging of Uncle Tom's Cabin (a role vacated by Thomas D. Rice). Brower briefly returned to minstrelsy in the late 1850s when several companies introduced a nostalgic program derived from minstrelsy's early years. "Uncle Frank" Brower retired from show business in 1867. He spent his final years running a saloon. Brower died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 4, 1874.
[edit] References
- Knowles, Mark (2002). Tap Roots: The Early History of Tap Dancing. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers.
- Mahar, William J. (1999). Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
- Sacks, Howard L, and Sacks Judith (1993). Way up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
