Transitions.

News of Buster Brown's death on May 7, 2002, one and a half weeks before he would have turned 89, spread through the tap grapevine so fast that four days later, his funeral at St. Peter's Church was overflowing with adoring fans and friends. From the stars of tap--Gregory Hines, Savion Glover, Jimmy Slyde--to the little tots just starting out at Buster's weekly jam sessions, the church audience reflected all that Buster stood for: an intermingling of black and white, young and old, male and female.

Buster was one of the last survivors of the black male fraternity The Copasetics, formed in 1949 to preserve tap and honor the late Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. His weekly jam sessions, which began around 1997 at the Manhattan club known as Swing 46, were all-inclusive, and anyone who had a pair of tap shoes could get up on the stage and hoof away to live music. He left a great legacy of inspiration on how to be, not just how to dance.

I knew Buster way before his Swing 46 era, which started roughly during the final days of Bring in `da Noise, Bring in `da Funk, the Broadway hit that paid tribute to him with a loving Savion Glover solo. When I took my Changing Times Tap Dancing Company on tour to Europe in 1984, Buster was in the show, and some of his friends came to the airport to greet us. "Yahoo, the cats are here," belted out an old jazz singer when she spotted her old buddies. Somehow, I knew instinctively that I wasn't like Buster--one of the "cats" who lived and breathed jazz and the music of the big bands.

I brought Buster, one of the "last of the Mohicans," to my New York University students every year to give a master class. He sang, rather than counted the tune, and you'd have to pay very close attention. Like all the other cats, he made tap dancing a hip thing to do.

Buster died with jazz music playing in his hospital room. At the gravesite, the Swing 46 regulars saluted him with "The Bill Robinson Dance." Buster seemed to have been lifted off the planet hearing jazz tap dancing.