Hadda Brooks

Hadda Brooks (* 29. October 1916 in Los Angeles as Hattie L. Hapgood ; † 21st November 2002 ibid) was an American rhythm and blues - and jazz - pianist , singer and composer .

Live and act

Hadda Brooks, dubbed Queen Of The Boogie , has recorded blues , boogie woogie , jazz , torch songs, and R&B in her sixty year career .

She grew up in Boyle Heights, in the Los Angeles area; her mother was a doctor, her father a deputy sheriff . Her grandfather, Samuel Alexander Hopgood (1857–1944), who introduced her to the world of theater and opera, had a great influence on her musical development. She later took classical music lessons from the Italian piano teacher Florence Bruni, with whom she worked for 20 years. After graduating from the University of Chicago , she returned to Los Angeles and met the vaudeville entertainer and singer Bert Williams .

Brooks, who was awarded a PhD in music, began her professional career as a pianist in the early 1940s when she found work in a tap dance studio owned by choreographer and dancer Willie Covan. She worked with film stars like Fred Astaire , Gene Kelly and Shirley Temple . During this time Brooks was briefly married to Earl "Shug" Morrison, who belonged to the Harlem Globetrotters and died after a year.

In 1945 she was asked by Jules Bihari to write a boogie within a week. "If you can do a boogie, my label will be in business, otherwise I'll lose $ 800." In September 1945, her first '78 was released , her own composition "Swingin 'the Boogie" ; the pianist, who was advertised as Queen of the Boogie , stylistically oriented her material from ballads and boogie-woogie to artists such as Albert Ammons , Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis . “Swingin 'the Boogie,” recorded by Jules Bihari's R&B label Modern Records , became a regional hit; her best-known song eventually became “Out of the Blue” which made it into the R&B Top Ten. Jules Bihari gave her the stage name Hadda Brooks .

Benny Goodman recommended the pianist to a director friend, who brought her into the film Out of the Blue (1947). Encouraged by Charlie Barnet , Brooks recorded "You Won't Let Me Go" as a singer in 1947 ; it was her first vocal number on record. With the instrumental piece That's My Desire she gave the Modern label one of the highest positions in the Rhythm & Blues charts in May 1947 with a fourth place . She had another hit in 1948 with the “Boogie Woogie Blues” . As an accompanying pianist she could also be heard around 1950 on recordings of Smokey Hogg ( "The Way You Treat Me" ).

Brooks usually played a lounge pianist in her film appearances, for example in A Lonely Place (1950) with Humphrey Bogart and in City of Illusions (1952) with Lana Turner and Kirk Douglas . Brooks was the first African American woman to get her own television show, The Hadda Brooks Show , in 1957 , a mix of conversation and a musical entertainment show that was broadcast in Los Angeles by KCOP-TV. The theme song for their show was the song “That's My Desire” ; Brooks appeared in a total of 26 half-hour episodes of the show.

In the 1970s she came to Europe for nightclub and festival appearances, during which time she rarely performed in the USA. It wasn't until the late 1990s that she started playing regularly in nightclubs in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City.

In 1993 Brooks was honored with the Prestigious Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation by Bonnie Raitt at a ceremony at Hollywood Palace. In 1995 she had an appearance in the Jack Nicholson film Crossing Guard - It happened on the open street by Sean Penn with the song "Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere" . She had another film appearance three years later in The Thirteenth Floor (1999). She was most recently seen in John John in the Sky (2000).

On her 1996 album Time Was When she was accompanied by guitarists Al Viola, Eugene Wright (bass) and Richard Dodd (cello); for the album she composed three songs "You Go Your Way" , "I'll Go Crazy" and "Mama's Blues". In her final years she performed in nightclubs such as Johnny Depp's Viper Room , New York's Algonquin Room, and Hollywood's Goldfinger's and Cinegrill . Her eightieth birthday was celebrated in Depp's Viper Room with guests like Uma Thurman and Jack Nicholson .

In 2000 Brooks was honored with the Los Angeles Music Awards with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

She died in November 2002 at the age of 86 at White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications from heart surgery.

In 2007, a 72-minute documentary, Queen of the Boogie , directed by Austin Young and Barry Pett, was released at the Los Angeles Silver Lake Film Festival.

Her best-known songs included: "Swingin 'the Boogie", "That's My Desire", "Romance in the Dark", "Don't Take Your Love From Me" and "Say It with a Kiss" .

Discographic notes

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

Hits

All titles that were listed in the US charts are listed. Year of publication, title , catalog number, highest ranking.

• 1947 That's My Desire - Modern 147 - R&B Charts # 4
• 1948 Out Of The Blue - Modern 600 - R&B Charts # 9
• 1948 What Have I Done? - Modern 602 - R&B charts # 3

Web links

• An interview with Hadda Brooks from the African American Music Collection at the University of Michigan
• Hadda Brooks in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ WDR3, October 29, 2016, 12 noon
2. ↑ New York Times, July 26, 1989, With Boogie-Woogie, Hadda Brooks Is Back
3. ↑ Vladimir, Bogdanov. All Music Guide to the Blues: The Definitive Guide to the Blues , Backbeat Books, p. 68, (2003) - ISBN 0879307366
4. ↑ Cohassey, John F. Toast of the Town: The Life and Times of Sunnie Wilson , Wayne State University Press, p 156, (1998) - ISBN 081432696X
5. ↑ IMDb: Out of the Blue (1947)
6. ↑ imdb: Lonely Place (1950)
7. ↑ imdb: The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
8. ↑ imdb: The Hadda Brooks Show (1957)
9. ↑ Rhythm and Blues Foundation Pioneer Awards ( Memento of the original from February 13, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
10. ↑ imdb: The Crossing Guard (1995)
11. ↑ imdb: The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
12. ↑ imdb: "John John in the Sky" (2000)
13. ↑ E-notes: Hadda Brooks Biography
14. ↑ LA Weekly Music Awards 2000  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
15. ^ Billboards To Day in History
16. ↑ "Queen of the Boogie" ( Memento of the original from July 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
17. ^ Whitburn, Joel: The Billboard Book of Top 40 R&B and Hip-Hop Hits . New York, NY: Billboard Books, 2006, p. 63