|
Hadda Brooks, 86, Performer Known as Queen of the Boogie, Dies in Los Angeles at Age
86
By Robert F. Worth
Hadda Brooks, the smoky-voiced torch singer and pianist who was known in the 1940's as the Queen of the Boogie
and came out of retirement in the late 1980's to gain new popularity with younger audiences, died on Thursday,
November 21, 2002, at 86.
She died at White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles, a few weeks after undergoing open-heart surgery, said Russ
Paul, her
manager.
Trained as a classical pianist, Ms. Brooks began recording boogie-woogie instrumentals in 1945 for Modern Records,
which
soon became the West Coast's premier rhythm-and-blues label. In the late 1940's and 50's she scored a number or
hits as a
torch singer, including "That's My Desire," "Trust in Me" and "Dream."
She played singers in several films, and won a role singing to Humphrey Bogart in the film "Out of the Blue"
after beating Ella
Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan in auditions. She toured with the Harlem Globetrotters, and in 1951 became the first
black woman in the country to host her own television variety show.
Born Hadda Hapgood in Los Angeles in 1916, she begged her father for piano lessons at the age of 4, and stretched
her tiny
hands on a board for a week until they could reach across an octave.
She started out playing at rehearsals for a tap dance coach, Willie Covan, with clients like Fred Astaire, Eleanor
Powell, Gene Kelly and Shirley Temple. Mr. Covan was friendly with the lobetrotters' players and in 1941 Ms. Brooks
married another basketball player, Earl Morrison. He died a year later of pneumonia at 21.
Early on in her career, she became close friends with Billie Holiday, whom she met in a nightclub ladies' room
when Ms. Holiday reportedly opened the door to her stall and offered Ms. Brooks a puff on her marijuana cigarette.
Ms. Brooks's big break came when a jukebox repairman named Jules Bihari overheard her playing a piano in a Los
Angeles
record store in the mid-1940's. He said he had only $800, but if she would work up a boogie in two weeks he would
record it.
She did, and the result, "Swinging the Boogie," became her first hit, in 1945.
In the 1950's, she drifted into obscurity, singing and playing in Europe, Hawaii and Australia, and in 1971 she
retired.
But in 1987 she sang at a supper club in Los Angeles and drew rave reviews. By the mid-1990's, she had been discovered
by
the younger generation, and was playing in the actor Johnny Depp's Viper Room in Los Angeles, along with quieter
locales like
the Oak Room of New York's Algonquin Hotel.
"Her voice, velvety and drenched with an after-hours smokiness, is familiar with deep emotions," wrote
the critic Peter Watrous
in The New York Times in 1989.
In 1993, the Rhythm and Blues Foundation gave her its Prestigious Pioneer Award in a ceremony at the Hollywood
Palace.
In 1995, she recorded a new CD titled "Time Was When" for Virgin/Pointblank Records, which has also issued
a new 50-year
retrospective of her work, "I've Got News for You."
Ms. Brooks is survived by a sister, Kathryn Carter, and two nephews, Kent and Darryl Carter.
"I try not to put anything new into my songs," she told an interviewer in 1989. "I go back 20 years
to find me."
**********
To sample some of Ms. Brooks' songs click on the link below --
http://haddabrooks.tripod.com/
**********
November 23, 2002
Hadda Brooks, 86; Pianist Known as 'Queen of the Boogie' and a Popular Torch Singer
By Dennis McLellan, LA Times Staff Writer
Hadda Brooks, who first rose to fame on the piano in the mid-1940s as "Queen of the Boogie" and became
a popular torch singer with hits such as "That's My Desire," has died. She was 86.
Brooks, who underwent a career renaissance a decade ago and drew enthusiastic crowds with her repertoire of ballads
and boogies, died Thursday at White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles. She underwent open-heart surgery a few weeks
ago, said Russ Paul, her manager.
Brooks' first single, the hit "Swingin' The Boogie" in 1945, launched not only her career, but also Los
Angeles-based Modern Records, which became the West Coast's premier post-war R&B label.
As a singer in the late 1940s and '50s, Brooks scored hits such as "Trust in Me," "Don't Take Your
Love From Me" and "Dream." She also sang in several films and, in the early '50s, became the first
African American entertainer to host a television variety show, on Channel 13 in Los Angeles.
"She was a beautiful woman and had a really sexy bedroom kind of voice," said Austin Young, a filmmaker
who is completing a documentary on Brooks.
Her last engagement was in September at Michael's Room, a club in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles.
"She played three or four weekends in a row," Young said. "It was packed every night she played,
and the crowd would go wild. This was a woman who knew how to work the crowd."
She was born Hadda Hopgood in Boyle Heights in 1916. At age 4, she begged her parents -- her mother was a doctor,
her father a deputy sheriff -- for piano lessons. She later studied classical music.
In 1941, she married Earl "Shug" Morrison, who played for the Harlem Globetrotters. But Morrison died
of pneumonia within a year, and Brooks never remarried.
She worked as a rehearsal piano player in tap-dance coach Willie Covan's studio, where the clients included Gene
Kelly, Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell. Although Brooks often frequented the blues clubs on Central Avenue, she
had no show business aspirations.
That changed in 1945, when a jukebox repairman named Jules Bihari heard her rehearsing in a downtown music store
for a children's dance troupe.
"I was trying to get a whole bunch of different rhythms from 'The Poet and Peasant' overture," Brooks
recalled in a 1993 interview with The Times. "I got the waltz and rumba, and I was trying to get the boogie
down.
"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.' "
Bihari, who gave Brooks her stage name, parlayed his $800 investment into Modern Records, which went on to record
other artists such as B.B. King and Etta James.
In 1947, Brooks was appearing with the Charlie Barnet Orchestra at the Million Dollar Theater in downtown Los Angeles
when Barnet asked what she'd do if she got an encore. When she answered "another boogie," Barnet said,
"Why don't you sing and break the monotony?"
At the next show, Brooks sang "You Won't Let Me Go," which became her first vocal recording. She recorded
for 12 years, with Modern, London Records and Columbia's Okeh label.
Late in 1947, on Benny Goodman's recommendation, Brooks appeared in a nightclub scene in the Virginia Mayo comedy
"Out of the Blue." (The title song became a top 10 hit for Brooks.) She also sang in "The Bad and
the Beautiful" and "In a Lonely Place."
Brooks had made several appearances on a local TV show when the producer called in 1951 and asked if she'd like
to do her own weekly show. Like most local TV programs at the time, "The Hadda Brooks Show" was not big
on production values.
"They sat me at the grand piano and opened up the top," Brooks said in the 1993 Times interview. "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."
In the ensuing years, Brooks lived and worked in Europe, Australia and Hawaii. Finding it increasingly difficult
to compete with rock 'n' roll, she retired in 1971 and moved back to Los Angeles.
In 1987, she came out of retirement when offered a job opening a new club in L.A.'s landmark Perino's restaurant.
Rave reviews brought other jobs, including a four-week engagement at Michael's Pub in New York City, which prompted
a New York Times critic to call her "a phenomenon."
In 1993, the Smithsonian-based Rhythm and Blues Foundation presented her with its Pioneer Award at the Hollywood
Palace. A year later, Virgin Records, which had bought the old Modern Records catalog, issued a 25-track compilation
of Brooks' early recordings on a CD titled "That's My Desire."
In 1995, she was back in the recording studio for the first time in decades, recording "Time Was When,"
a CD for Pointblank/Virgin Records. In 1999, the
label released "I've Got News for You," a 50-year double-CD retrospective, which included eight new tracks.
She is survived by a sister, Kathryn Carter of Rowland Heights. A private memorial service will be held.
|
