Entertainer. Born Ernest Reuben Crowdus, Jr. in Bowling Green, Kentucky, the son of Louise West and Ernest Reuben Crowdus. There is no record of his ever having attended school; instead, from a young age he performed with various circuses and minstrel troupes, including at the age of twelve, playing a juvenile role with a troupe in performances of the popular "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, he worked as a minstrel, and with the Frohman Brothers troupe traveled to England. Returning to the US, he landed a bigger role in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." He also performed in an array of minstrel groups before joining a vaudeville quartet. It was about this time he changed his stage name to Hogan, claiming he did so because "Irish performers were in vogue." In 1895, he published "La Pas Ma La," a piano number with vocals that was meant to accompany a dance he had invented, the "pasmala." He dubbed the tune a "rag," and the rhythm he incorporated became known as ragtime. The following year he re-wrote a tune he heard in Chicago entitled "All Pimps Look Alike to Me;" the subsequent "All Coons Look Alike to Me" was both a hit, and an embarrassment, and he would later admit his lasting regret in using the slur. As he grew in popularity, he rejected the use of blackface on stage, and popularized a natural look in favor of a derogatory, manufactured stereotype. He was earning a very respectable $300-$400 a week by the peak of his career. He contributed the music to such Broadway shows as "Madge Smith, Attorney" (1901) and "Southern Enchantment" (1903). He also took the starring role in "Rufus Ratus" in 1906. He was the first black entertainer to both produce and star in a Broadway show, "The Oyster Man," in 1907. In January 1908, he collapsed on stage in New York, and again in Boston while "The Oyster Man" was on tour. He never recovered, succumbing to tuberculosis the following year at the age of forty-four.