Cowboy Roy Brown

Born on April 20, 1875, Cowboy Roy Brown came into the world as the child of an Arkansas preacher skilled on the fiddle. Instruction from his father soon enabled Brown to master the guitar and join him during church services. In 1882, at age seven, he accompanied his father on a move to Butler County, MO, located just over the Arkansas line along the Black River. Brown headed to Kansas City in his twenties and remained there for about a decade before continuing on to Marion, IL, Milwaukee, WI, and Deadwood, SD, ultimately establishing residence in St. Louis. He earned his living there performing as a street singer. Accompanying himself on an aged guitar he called "Baby" and inserting sharp notes from a kazoo he named "Leon," Brown delivered a wide-ranging street program that drew on folk, blues, gospel, pop, and cowboy material. His outdoor act was captured on tape in the mid-'50s, when he had reached his seventies or early eighties, and the resulting session finally appeared five decades later on Delmark Records in 2007 as Street Singer.