The oldest of seven children, Brown was steered away from “the devil's music” by her father, a church choir director, but by her late teens she was singing in clubs in Virginia's Tidewater region and had begun to perform with touring bands. In 1949, after spending nine months in a hospital recovering from an automobile accident, Brown released her first recording, “So Long.” Abetted by Atlantic's cofounder Herb Abramson and songwriter Rudy Toombs, she became the most popular female rhythm-and-blues singer of the 1950s with a string of number one hits that included “Teardrops from My Eyes” (1950), “5-10-15 Hours” (1952), and her signature tune, “(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean” (1953). After years of having her records covered by white performers, she experienced crossover pop success with “Lucky Lips” (1957) and “This Little Girl's Gone Rockin' ” (1958).

Her career began a long decline in the early 1960s. Having survived four failed marriages, she spent the next decade driving a bus and cleaning houses while raising two sons. She began acting in the mid-1970s, first in television situation comedies and then in films and on the stage. In 1989 she won a Tony Award for best performance by a leading actress for the musical Black and Blue, and in 1990 she won a Grammy Award for best jazz vocal by a female. A champion of musicians' rights, she spoke out against exploitative contracts, and in the 1980s she eventually received some back royalties from Atlantic. Brown, whose principal influences were Ella Fitzgerald (Fitzgerald, Ella) and Billie Holiday (Holiday, Billie), was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Her memoir, Miss Rhythm (cowritten with Andrew Yule), was published in 1996.