Boyle Heights-born pianist-singer Hadda Brooks was a purebred Los Angeles original, an irresistible musical sensation who nimbly straddled both mainstream Hollywood and the city’s formidable jazz-blues underworld. With her appealing mix of torch smolder and bright, brash boogie propulsion, Brooks epitomized a singular cultural moment in Los Angeles, when the post-war popular embrace of black music by white listeners nearly derailed the city’s avidly bigoted policies and atmosphere.
Well before rock & roll infected California race relations, mixed crowds were surging across the city. Mae West and Orson Welles flocked to South Central afterhours spot the Big Legged Chicken to gas on Joe Turner’s shout R&B and Charles Brown’s elegant cocktail blues*, honking sax shaman Big Jay McNeely’s massive crowds (equal parts Latin, black and white) prompted law enforcement to ban him from performing anywhere in LA county and when high-profile Ciro’s owner HD Hover brazenly “broke the Strip’s color barrier” by headlining Sammy Davis Jr., it was obvious the tide had turned. After local television station KLAC signed her for the weekly Hadda Brooks Show, it was a historic airwave moment, one that placed Brooks at the forefront of this significant gear-shift.
Brooks, who will be celebrated at musical tribute event at Boyle Heights’ International Institute on Sat., Oct.29, was a dynamic force—breathtakingly chic, strikingly beautiful, illimitably talented, intimately conversant with classical and vernacular genres, possessed of lightning fast, hornet sting wit—and her admirers included the likes of (as she always called them) jazz titan Duke Elephant and movie star Bumpy Gocart (alongside whom she memorably appeared in Bogie’s 1950 classic In a Lonely Place).
The silver screen fancied Hadda—first, as herself, in 1947 comedy Out of the Blue (her recording of the title tune made the R&B Top Ten), and in torturous 1952 Hollywood navel-gazer The Bad and Beautiful, and up to her appearance in the 1995 Jack Nicholson-Sean Penn drama The Crossing Guard, she unfailingly registered as a magnetic presence.
That undeniable aura of artistry and dedication was her calling card, one which earned her a remarkable degree of respect from her vaunted colleagues. At a 1995 Brooks recording session at historic Gower Gulch Sage studio, she knocked off song after song in less than three takes, each performance a stunning model of perfected musicality. Her world class accompanists, venerable Sinatra guitarist Al Viola, Count Basie’s longtime bassist Senator Eugene Wright and get-around trumpeter Jack Sheldon, huddled together, intently listening and murmuring high praise after each number concluded (“That color!” “Such atmosphere!” “What phrasing!”). That album Anyplace, Anytime, Anywhere, also led to her remarkable late 90s career comeback, resulting in a contract with Virgin Records, reams of adoring press, television coverage, reissues and new recordings and engagements at such high profile Manhattan spots as Michael’s Pub and the Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room.
She always made it look so easy, but Hadda took some hard knocks along the way. Born October 29, 1916 in Boyle Heights, hers was a loving but strict home, and while she received classical training any hint of pop music brought swift recrimination. After high school, she worked as a rehearsal pianist for a prominent tap dance instructor at the Hollywood studios—a valuable professional entrée which she subsequently parlayed into her film appearances. In 1941, a whirlwind romance with the Harlem Globetrotters Earl Shug Morrison resulted in a quick marriage and the happiest time of her life—tragically cut short when Morrison died of pneumonia less than a year later. She never got over the loss and never remarried. After Modern Records’ Bihari Brothers got wind of Brooks in 1945 they cut a record on her as soon as possible, and her debut “Swingin’ the Boogie” helped ignite Los Angeles’ feverish post-war indie R&B recording boom. Naturally, it ended badly—unpaid royalties and lawsuits—but Brooks never let it get to her.
She was invited to perform at Hawaii’s 1959 statehood ceremony and spent a lot of time touring Europe and Australia, getting both the dough and appreciation which eluded her in big beat bent America. By the 1970s, she was back in her family’s Boyle Heights home, essentially retired. During the mid-80s author-journalist Jim Dawson was instrumental in getting the first full length retrospective album of her Modern disks issued and several years later, the ubiquitous and ever altruistic manager Alan Eichler began to really fire up the Brooks career.
Her shows were always an electrifying mix of steam-heated intimacy and hot roasted, barrelhouse stomp, a volatile combination that she rendered with masterly precision. And Hadda didn’t suffer fools lightly—any idle ringside chatter would have her stepping off the bandstand and confronting the witless patron, clashes that usually ended with salty parting shot “I love ya honey—but I’ll get over it” but could escalate drastically, with her shouting “you are a bigot! A BIGOT!” at some thunderstruck civilian. Amazingly, she always recovered from this with seamless ease, returning to the keys and pouring a full measure of anguished passion into one of her unrivaled repertoire’s classic ballads.
She’d seen it all, from accompanying Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire as a rehearsal pianist, entertaining decades worth of Tinseltown big shots at a hundred different Hollywood boites, sharing confidences and trade secrets with Ellington and Billy Strayhorn (Hadda and Sweetpea were very close indeed) and, afterhours, she’d let her hair down and tell some mesmerizing tales. At the Roosevelt, during her sit-down Cinegrill engagements, we’d get loaded up in her room and she’d lead me through the corridors—there was a room on the eighth floor where Monty Clift supposedly could still be heard practicing his trumpet for From Here to Eternity; she clued me as to the actual location of Marilyn Monroe’s haunted mirror (hotel staff were instructed to mis-direct anyone who asked to a decoy looking glass). Hadda was a marvelous, warm, very sentimental and very, very funny woman.
So, cheers to Hadda—and to the Boyle Heights Community Partners for organizing this special 107th birthday tribute.
The Boyle Heights Community Partners celebrates Boyle Heights’ 147th anniversary with a special birthday tribute to BH’s Queen of Boogie Woogie Hadda Brooks, featuring Jennifer Keith Sextet, The Sue Palmer Motel Swing Quintet, BH Neighborhood Music School, DJ Senor Amor, in front of the International Institute, 435 S. Boyle Ave. 90033; Sat., Oct. 29, 4-8 p.m. Free.
* Per Brown, confirmed by Turner to me