‘MAKE EVERY TAP COUNT’ : Eddie Brown’s Step-by-Step Method Adds Up to Longevity, Distinctive Style

Eddie Brown has been hoofing it for nearly seven decades now.

“I been dancing ever since I was 5 years old,” said Brown, 73, a tap master who will appear Saturday at Orange Coast College with Rhapsody in Taps, a troupe of five dancers and five jazz musicians based in Los Angeles.

An Omaha native, the Los Angeles resident learned to tap on street corners, jamming all day with buddies. “A bunch of us got together and just traded steps.” As a professional, he danced with the Bill (Bojangles) Robinson Review in the ‘30s, with Billie Holiday in the ‘40s, with the Mills Brothers in the ‘50s and with Dizzy Gillespie and the stage production “Evolution of the Blues” in the ‘70s.

Since 1983, he hasn’t missed a major performance with Rhapsody in Taps, said company co-founder and artistic director Linda Sohl-Donnell.

Brown began his career as a flash dancer doing vigorous acrobatic tapping that left him gasping for air. Seeking something less exhausting, he developed his trademark emphasis on rhythm and tap sounds, inspired by the great John Bubbles. Before Bubbles came along, most tap dancing had been done up on the toes, but he revolutionized tap by lowering his heels to the floor, adding more taps to the measure.

“Eddie’s style is very distinctive,” Sohl-Donnell said. “If you hear someone doing his material, you’ll know it’s Eddie’s material,” just by the sound of the taps. “One of his distinctive qualities is the way he accents steps within a phrase, where he places the strong punctuation.”

And how does Brown go about achieving all that?

“Make every tap count; don’t miss any. This is the thing,” he said in a recent phone interview.

While he may make “the thing” sound like a snap, it’s anything but, said Sohl-Donnell, an OCC dance instructor who took one of Brown’s classes the other day after a long hiatus. “I really forgot how challenging his material is. Even though I’ve learned several of his pieces and I have that vocabulary, he always manages to create a challenge in his foot work and musicality.”

Group and private classes as well as performances keep Brown busy seven days a week, he said. But dance has always been his megavitamin and lately his elixir of youth.

“Tap keeps you going.” he said. “I kept dancing all those years, and teaching and being around young people keeps you going.”

Tap’s popularity slumped in the ‘50s, but it now has more appeal than ever, he said.

“It’s (part of our) American heritage and it should be kept alive, because it’s a wonderful art and people love it better now than they did before. What I try to do is to help young people so they can show other young people and keep passing it on.”

What: Rhapsody in Taps with tap master Eddie Brown.

When: Saturday, Feb. 8, at 8 p.m.

Where: Orange Coast College, Robert B. Moore Theatre, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa.

Whereabouts: San Diego (405) Freeway to Fairview exit; south to Orange Coast College.

Wherewithal: Tickets: $10.50 to $13.

Where to call: (714) 432-5880.