Hadda Brooks - Biography
By Johnny Whiteside
Los Angeles singer-pianist Hadda Brooks was an extraordinary stylist. From her initial post-war fame as “Queen of the Boogie,” to her long-running string of cameo appearances in Hollywood films (from 1947’s The Bad & the Beautiful to 1995’s The Crossing Guard), her knack for smoldering torch ballads and classical music inspired instrumentals, Brooks played an important role in the development of post-war Rhythm & Blues. A stylist whose influence touched such important performers as Charles Brown and Jimmy Scott, Brooks was also the first African-American woman to have her own television program, The Hadda Brooks Show, which aired on Los Angeles’ KTLA in 1951-52. Brooks allure remained so strong that, after several lean decades, she enjoyed a surprising career revival late in life, packing nightclubs coast to coast, performing at movie stars' birthday parties, as the subject of glowing stories in Rolling Stone and Details magazine and recording her final albums for Virgin Records. Being that hip at age 80 was no simple task, but for Brooks it was as easy as ordering a vodka on the rocks.
Born Hadda Hopgood on October 19, 1916 in the Boyle Heights district of East Los Angeles, her upbringing was the total opposite of the classic background for an R&B star. Her father was a Deputy Sheriff, her mother a practicing doctor and the only music she heard growing up was opera, when her grandfather would crank up the Victrola and play his collection of 78s by Galli-Curci and Caruso. She had, in fact, no exposure to the blues whatsoever, and was a classically trained pianist who actively studied for over twenty years. Following graduation from high school, she attended Chicago’s Northwestern University, where she met, and wed, Harlem Globetrotter Earl “Shug” Morrison and was stunned when he died less a year into their marriage. She returned to Los Angeles and took a job as a rehearsal pianist at a studio in Hollywood. A 1945 chance meeting with jukebox repairman Jules Bihari changed everything; she was in a music store trying to work out a boogie on classical piece “The Poet & the Peasant” for a client, when Bihari asked her if she could play a boogie. “That’s what I’m trying to do,” she dryly answered. Bihari announced that had an eight hundred dollar budget and if she could whip up a good one in a weeks time, he’d press it on record and put it out. Bihari and his brother had just founded Modern Records in hopes of cashing in on the post-war R&B boom that was sweeping Los Angeles, and in short order, Brooks’ “Swingin’ the Boogie” launched their label. The disk's brisk sales flabbergasted Brooks, and she shortly found herself an in-demand talent, invited to guest on the show of swing kingpin Lionel Hampton and as a featured attraction with big band leader Charlie Barnet, who took her on the road, starting with an engagement at Harlem’s fabled Apollo Theater.
By then, she was well-established as Queen of the Boogie, and had never even attempted a vocal--until Barnet arm-twisted her in singing “Trust in Me” as an encore at Los Angeles’ Million Dollar theater. The ballad, it turned out, was a perfect fit, and Brooks began to concentrate on intense torchy tales of love and loss, developing a repertoire of numbers like “Don‘t Take Your Love From Me,” “In the Dark” and “That’s My Desire” (after she heard Frankie Laine crooning it at a Hollywood club). Her choice of material was directly related to the profound sense of loss she still felt over losing her husband; as Brooks said years later, “even though the lyric doesn’t exactly fit, that would have been my desire--to please my husband, and “Trust in Me” goes back to my husband, too.”
While many of these were pop standards, she infused them with a deep blues feel, an ability transferred to her by Teddy Bunn, the veteran jazz guitarist who was featured on most of her Modern 78’s. “I gave him 16 bars for a solo on all my records,’ she said, ”and maybe that’s where the blues really came into my music, because Teddy was a very bluesy guitarist.” It was an impeccable formula, and Brooks scored several top ten R&B hits at Modern. She also became a fine songwriter, composing memorable originals like “Stolen Love” and “Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere.” After splitting with the Biharis, she went on to record stacks of platters at Flair and Okeh, but the rock & roll craze of the mid-50’s took the commercial steam out of her record sales.. Brooks remained a well-known national figure on the nightclub circuit and was invited, by the governor, to perform at the official ceremony marking Hawaii’s entry into the union in 1958.
She knocked around with an illustrious set of pals--Billy Strayhorn, Jimmy Scott, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Billie Holiday, most of whom she had cracked nicknames for (like “Duke Elephant” for Ellington and “Bumpy Gocart” for Humphrey Bogart, whom she first met when appearing in his 1951 picture, In a Lonely Place)--but as the years passed, Brooks' career inevitably cooled. By the late 80’s, appearing in a variety of small Hollywood jazz joints, her re-discovery began as industry types realized they had better pay attention--Brooks was infamous for jumping off the piano bench mid-song and stalking onto the floor to personally chastise inattentive patrons, almost always ending the tongue lashing with her signature kiss off “I love you honey--but I‘ll get over it.” Word of mouth, a series of re-issues of her classic late 40s sides and the sublime Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere album (1993 DRG) heightened the momentum and by the time she turned 80, she had already signed to Virgin and recorded--in two days--the outstanding Time Was When (1995 Pointblank/Virgin). She celebrated the occasion with a party at the Viper Room attended by new Tinsel town chums like Jack Nicholson and Uma Thurman. Brooks lived it up right until the very end of her life, when she died on November 20, 2001 at age 86.
