Hadda Brooks
| Hadda Brooks | |
|---|---|
Brooks as the singer of "I Hadn't Anyone Till You" in the film In a Lonely Place (1950)
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Hattie L. Hapgood |
| Also known as | Queen of the Boogie |
| Born |
October 29, 1916 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Died | November 21, 2002 (aged 86) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Genres | Blues, boogie woogie, jazz, R&B |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, composer |
| Instruments | Piano, vocals |
| Years active | 1940s–2000s |
| Labels | Modern, Crown, Virgin, Point Blank, Oldie Blues |
Hadda Brooks (October 29, 1916 – November 21, 2002) was an American pianist, vocalist and composer. Her first single, "Swingin' the Boogie", which she composed, was issued in 1945. She was billed as "Queen of the Boogie". She sang at Hawaii's official statehood ceremony in 1959 and was reportedly asked for a private audience by Pope Pius XII.
She was born Hattie L. Hapgood in Los Angeles in 1916, and was raised in the Boyle Heights area by her parents who had migrated to California from the South. Her mother, Goldie Wright, was a doctor and her father, John Hapgood, a deputy sheriff. Her grandfather, Samuel Alexander Hapgood (October 22, 1857 – November 30, 1944), moved to California from Atlanta, Georgia, and proved to be an enormous influence on Brooks. He introduced her to theater and the operatic voices of Amelita Galli-Curci and Enrico Caruso. In her youth she formally studied classical music with an Italian piano instructor, Florence Bruni, with whom she trained for twenty years.
She attended the University of Chicago, and later returned to Los Angeles. She came to love the subtle comedy of black theater and vaudeville entertainer and singer Bert Williams. Brooks began playing piano professionally in the early 1940s at a tap-dance studio owned by Hollywood choreographer and dancer Willie Covan. For ten dollars a week, she played the popular tunes of the day while Covan worked with such stars as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and Shirley Temple.
Brooks was married briefly during this period to a Harlem Globetrotter named Earl "Shug" Morrison in 1941. She toured with the team when they traveled. Morrison developed pulmonary pneumonia, however, and died about a year after they were married. It was Brooks' only marriage.
Brooks actually preferred ballads to boogie-woogie, but worked up her style by listening to Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, and Meade Lux Lewis records. Her first recording, the pounding "Swingin' the Boogie", for Jules Bihari's Modern Records, was a sizable regional hit in 1945, and another R&B Top Ten with "Out of the Blue," her most famous song. It was Jules Bihari who gave her the recording name Hadda Brooks. Clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman recommended Brooks to a film director friend of his who placed her in the film Out of the Blue in 1947.
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