• Genre: Blues
• Active: '40s - '90s
• Instruments: Vocals, Piano

Biography

In the mid- to late '40s, black popular music began to mutate from swing jazz and boogie-woogie into the sort of rhythm & blues that helped lay the foundation for rock & roll. Singer and pianist Hadda Brooks was one of the many figures who was significant in aiding that transition, although she's largely forgotten today. While her torch song delivery was rooted in the big band era, her boogie-woogie piano looked forward to jump blues and R&B. Ironically, the same qualities that made her briefly successful -- her elegant vocals and jazzy arrangements -- left her ill-equipped to compete when harder-driving forms of rhythm & blues, and then early rock & roll, began to dominate the marketplace in the early '50s.

Brooks got a recording deal through a chance meeting with jukebox operator Jules Bihari, who was looking to record some boogie-woogie. The Los Angeles-based Bihari, along with his brother Joe, would become major players in early R&B via their Modern label, which issued sides by B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Etta James, Jesse Belvin, and other stars. Brooks actually preferred ballads to boogie-woogies, but worked up her style by listening to Pete Johnson, Albert Ammons, and Meade Lux Lewis records. Her first record, the pounding "Swingin' the Boogie," was a sizable regional hit in 1945. Joe Bihari would later tell author Arnold Shaw that the single was instrumental in establishing the Biharis' in the record business.

Brooks' first records were instrumental, but by 1946 she was singing as well. She had a fair amount of success for Modern in the late '40s, reaching the R&B Top Ten with "Out of the Blue" and her most famous song, "That's My Desire" (which was covered for a big pop hit by Frankie Laine). Her success on record led to some roles in films, most notably in a scene from In a Lonely Place, which starred Humphrey Bogart.

Brooks briefly left Modern for an unsuccessful stint with major label London in 1950. After a similarly unrewarding return to Modern in the early '50s, and a brief stay at Okeh, she largely withdrew from recording into the nightclub circuit. For most of the 1960s, in fact, she was based in Australia, where she hosted her own TV show. Her profile was boosted in the mid-'90s by her induction into the Rhythm & Blues Foundation Hall of Fame, and by the inclusion of her recording of "Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere" in the film The Crossing Guard. A new album on Pointblank, Time Was When, was released in early 1996. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide

That's Where I Came In Buy this CD

Swingin' the Boogie Buy this CD

I've Got News for You Buy this CD

Jump Back Honey: The Complete OKeh Sessions Buy this CD

That's My Desire Buy this CD

pianist; singer; television show host; actor

Personal Information

Born Hadda Hopgood on October 2, 1916, in Los Angeles, CA; died on November 21, 2002, Los Angeles, CA; married Earl "Shug" Morrison, 1941 (died 1942).
Education: Attended Northwestern University, Chicago, IL; attended Chapman College, CA.

Career

Singer and pianist, 1945-71, 1987-2002; television show host, 1951-1960s; actress, 1947-2000.

Life's Work

During the post-World War II years, Hadda Brooks burst on the scene as the "Queen of the Boogie," releasing hot piano numbers that burned up jukeboxes across the country. Soon she picked up a microphone and let loose her smoky bedroom voice on chart-topping ballads that had couples swooning on dance floors nationwide. She sang for Humphrey Bogart, the Queen of England, and the Pope. Her talents landed her on both the big and small screens and sent her soaring around the world on tour. She was hot, but by 1971 she'd had enough and retired into semi-obscurity. However, someone remembered her soul-infused singing and by the 1990s she had reemerged from retirement to enjoy another round of celebrity. She became a darling of the club circuit, seducing packed audiences with her piano virtuosity and vocal passion. At the age of 79, she signed with Virgin records and released two albums. She appeared opposite Jack Nicholson on the big screen and counted some of Hollywood's hottest talents among her close friends. Hers was a talent that transcended generations. As her official website noted, "She continued to delight her fans up until her death, at age 86, with the same impassioned brassiness as she did in her recordings and performances from the 1940s to the 2000s.... From Analog to Digital.... From 78 Records to MP3's."

Introduced to Music by Grandfather

Brooks was born Hadda Hopgood on October 2, 1916, to fairly affluent parents in Boyle Heights, a subdivision of Los Angeles. Her mother was a doctor--a rarity for a black women in the early 1900s--and her father was one of the first African Americans to be named a deputy sheriff. Brooks mercifully was spared the horrible racism that so many African Americans endured during that time. However, The Independent quoted her as once saying of her father, "People thought he was white. I took his colour mostly, and my sister's a little darker, like my mother. It wasn't until folks saw him taking us out for walks that they started wondering what colour he was."

The Hopgoods had emigrated from Georgia where Brooks' grandfather, Samuel Alexander Hopgood, had worked as a Pullman porter and had managed to save enough money to buy land in California. The house Brooks was raised in was built by her grandfather. Brooks told Offbeat, "My grandfather was a big influence on me." He introduced Brooks to classical music and opera at an early age and took Brooks and her sister to musicals and concerts. "We had a tall standup RCA Victor Victrola and my grandfather had the records and used to bring them out every Saturday after we finished dinner," Brooks recalled to Offbeat.

By the age of four, Brooks decided she wanted to play piano and begged her father for lessons, however, her prospective teacher told her she'd have to wait until her hands could span an octave, or eight keys. "She showed me how I could reach an octave by stretching my hands on the piano and finally in a week's time I got an octave, barely, and she took me," Brooks recalled to Offbeat. Her musical abilities landed her a spot at Los Angeles's Polytechnic High School, a school for aspiring musicians. Following graduation she attended Northwestern University in Chicago and then returned home to Chapman College in California, where she continued her musical training. Brooks first professional employment was as a piano player for the Willie Covan Dance Studio in Los Angeles. She earned $10 a week. "I thought that was a lot of money because I had never worked in my life," she told Offbeat. She was soon tinkling the ivories for students who included Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and Shirley Temple. Through the studio's owner she met Earl "Shug" Morrison, a member of the Harlem Globetrotters and in 1941 they were married. However, a year later Morrison died suddenly of pneumonia at the age of 21. Brooks would never remarry.

From Boogie Queen to Torch Empress

Though she had trained as a musician, Brooks was not actively seeking a career as a performer. Nonetheless, a career found her. In 1945 she was browsing through a music store and began playing one of the pianos, trying to nail down a boogie sound. "There was a man standing near me while I was playing, and he asked me if I could do a boogie. I said, 'Well, I'm trying.' And he said, 'I'll give you a week. If you can work up a boogie, I'll record it. I have $800, and if it goes, then we're in business. If it doesn't go, I've lost $800,'" the Los Angeles Times quoted Brooks as saying. That man was jukebox repairman Jules Bihari. A week later, Brooks had written a boogie for piano and true to his word, Bihari recorded it. Thus, Modern Records was launched.

With World War II just over, the country was in the mood for something fun and boogie music was it. Brooks' first recording "Swingin' the Boogie" was an instant hit. She dropped Hopgood and adopted the stage name Brooks and began churning out records. She soon earned the title of "Queen of the Boogie." "I was making on the order of three boogie recordings a month," she told Offbeat. Over the next five years, Modern would release more than 60 of Brooks' recordings. In the process the record company became the West Coast's premier R&B label, signing artists such as B.B. King and Etta James. Meanwhile, Bihari and Brooks began a love affair that lasted many years. In many interviews she referred to him as "the love of her life."

Brooks became a regular on the club circuit and performed with big names such as Artie Shaw and the Count Basie Orchestra. At the time she was performing strictly as a pianist. However, after a 1947 performance, band leader Charlie Barnett asked her what she would do if she was asked for an encore. When she replied "another boogie," he suggested that she sing. She tried to protest saying she wasn't a singer, but according to The Times, Barnett told her to "fake it." On her next foray onto the stage she sang "You Won't Let Me Go." The fans went wild and the song promptly became her first vocal recording. "Hadda had a throaty, gritty voice that had a seductive, after-hours quality," record producer Lester Sill told The Times. Her voice made hits out of the songs "That's My Desire," "Trust in Me," and "Dream," and soon she had a new nickname, "The Empress of the Torch Blues."

Sang on Big and Small Screens

In 1947 Brooks made her film debut as a nightclub singer in the comedy Out of the Blue. The film was forgettable but the title song became a top ten hit for Brooks. In 1950 Brooks beat out Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan to appear in the Humphrey Bogart film, In a Lonely Place. In the film she sang "I Hadn't Anyone 'Til You" as Bogart looked on. She recalled to Los Angeles Magazine that Bogie intervened with a studio mogul who "kept asking me to play the song this way, play it that way. Finally, Bogart said, 'Why don't you let her play it the way she wants?'" She also appeared as a singer in The Bad and the Beautiful starring Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner.

Brooks' sultry singing style combined with her stunning looks made her a hot property in Los Angeles and in 1951 she became the first African-American woman to have her own weekly television show. The Hadda Brooks Show was a typical low-budget local production. "They sat me at the grand piano and opened up the top," Brooks told the Los Angeles Times. "They had this great big ceramic ashtray--because I was smoking at the time--and they opened the show with a close-up on a cigarette in the ashtray, and then came in on my face. They pointed to me, and I sang maybe eight bars of 'That's My Desire.' From that point, I was on my own. That was the whole format."

When her records stopped topping the charts, Brooks left Modern--despite her relationship with Bihari--and signed with Columbia's OKeh label in 1952. She also recorded briefly for London Records. She found little success at either label and returned to Modern in 1956. She and Bihari teamed up in 1957 to record her full-length album Femme Fatale. Meanwhile she toured around the world including a performance for the Queen of England and a private audience with Pope Pius XII. She also traveled with the Harlem Globetrotters, performing for half-time audiences. By the 1960s she had become fed up with America's growing appetite for raucous rock-and-roll. "I couldn't keep an audience of 25 quiet," she told Los Angeles Magazine. After a stint in Hawaii, Brooks emigrated to Australia. There she found success with another television show, "In Melbourne Tonight," and kept up an active performing schedule. In 1971 Brooks returned to Los Angeles and retired.

Coaxed Out of Retirement

Many stories might end there, with a well-deserved retirement after a nearly 30-year long career. However, Brooks was set to make a comeback. "I've always said I'd keep performing until the day that I can't walk to the piano unassisted," she told The Clarion-Ledger. In 1987 she was coaxed out of retirement to perform at a high-profile restaurant opening. Los Angeles's newest crop of clubsters were immediately seduced by her still strong, sultry-as-ever voice. With the reemergence of lounge music as the preferred sound of the terminally hip, Brooks became a star once again. Of her new young fans, Brooks was enamored, claiming they kept her young. "It's like a second chance," she told the Los Angeles Times. "And I'm very happy about it, because I am not going to be wheeled up to a piano to sing to people who are 60 and 80 years old." In 1989 she performed a series of shows in New York City prompting a New York Times music critic to write, "Her voice, velvety and drenched with an after-hours smokiness, is familiar with deep emotions." During performances, she toyed with the audiences, relishing the raised eyebrows she'd get when she'd croon numbers such as "You Can't Tell the Difference After Dark."

After nearly half a century of performing, it was obvious that Brooks had only gotten better. The Smithsonian's Rhythm and Blues Foundation agreed and in 1993 inducted her into its Hall of Fame and awarded her its Pioneer Award. In 1994 she was back in the studio recording the album Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere. The following year she performed the title track for the film The Crossing Guard starring Jack Nicholson. She also became a regular performer at Johnny Depp's Hollywood hot spot The Viper Room. A writer from the Los Angeles Times reviewed one of her performances there commenting, "Often, as Hadda Brooks--the woman who practically invented the torch song--slumped over the keys at the Viper Room on Thursday and tickled the ivories with dazzling expertise, her voice hushed in a sultry whisper and eyes clenched in the rapture, many in the audience had to wonder: If this tiny, 79-year-old woman can still manage to fill a room with her sex appeal at this age, just imagine what she must have been like when she performed for Humphrey Bogart."

In 1995, exactly 50 years after making her first recording with Modern, she returned full-circle by signing with Virgin, the mega-label that had acquired Modern. In 1996 she released Time Was When, a CD of new recordings, and in 1998, I've Got News For You, a double-CD retrospective of her work. In 1999 Brooks appeared back on the big screen as a singer in The Thirteenth Floor and in 2000, she had her first speaking part in John John in the Sky. Brooks continued to perform to packed audiences and music festivals throughout the country right up until her death on November 21, 2002. Her last performances were two month's earlier at a Los Angeles club. "She played three or four weekends in a row," the manager told the Los Angeles Times. "It was packed every night she played, and the crowd would go wild. This was a woman who knew how to work the crowd."

Awards

Hall of Fame and Pioneer Award, Rhythm and Blues Foundation, Smithsonian Institute, 1993.

Works

Selected works

Singles

• "Swingin' the Boogie," 1945.
• "That's My Desire," 1947.
• "Out of the Blue," 1948.
• "I Hadn't Anyone 'Til You," 1949.
• "Trust in Me," 1954.
• "Dream," 1957.
• "Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere," 1994.
• "The Crossing Guard," 1995.
• "Need a Little Sugar In My Bowl," 1996.

Albums

• Femme Fatale, Modern, 1956.
• Boogie, Crown, 1958.
• Sings & Swings, Crown, 1963.
• Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere, DRG, 1994.
• That's My Desire, Virgin, 1994.
• Time Was When, Virgin, 1996.
• I've Got News for You, Virgin, 1999.
• Romance in the Dark, Ace, 2002.
• Swingin' the Boogie, Ace, 2003.

Films

• Out of the Blue, 1947.
• In a Lonely Place, 1950.
• The Bad and the Beautiful, 1952.
• The Crossing Guard, 1995.
• The Thirteenth Floor, 1999.
• John John in the Sky, 2000.

Television

• The Hadda Brooks Show, 1951.
• In Melbourne Tonight, 1960s.

Further Reading

Periodicals

• Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS), July 8, 1999, p. F15.
• Independent (London, England), November 26, 2002, p. 22.
• Los Angeles Magazine, December 1998, p. 46.
• Los Angeles Times, August 10, 1996, p. 6; February 1, 1998, p. 5; November 23, 2002, p. B20.
• New York Times, November 24, 2002, p. 40.
• Times (London, England), November 29, 2002, p. 40.

On-line

• "Backtalk with Ms. Hadda Brooks," Offbeat, www.offbeat.com/ob9910/backtalk.html (February 25, 2003).
• The Official Hadda Brooks Website, www.haddabrooks.com (February 26, 2003).

— Candace LaBalle

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