Henry Brown

Henry Brown departed Tennessee at age 12 and settled in St. Louis, Missouri, where he first studied piano while still attending school. A Deep Morgan Street blues player known to audiences only as "Blackmouth" passed along an economical style of piano blues that shaped Brown’s approach. Brown went on to collaborate with St. Louis Jimmy Oden and trombonist Ike Rogers; alongside Rogers and guitarist Lawrence Casey, the three musicians assembled the trio Biddle Street Boys. Between regular club engagements throughout St. Louis—the city where he spent most of his life and continued working steadily into the mid-’70s—he cut sides with Mary Johnson and others, frequently appearing with Rogers on those recordings.