Finally, Recognition for a Pioneer : R&B;’s Hadda Brooks Wasn’t Looking for Fame--Just a Living

“I never expected it,” said Hadda Brooks. “In fact, I never realized it was possible.”

The veteran pianist-singer was clearly amazed to be named a winner of the 1993 Pioneer Award by the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, which holds its fourth annual awards dinner Thursday at the Palace in Hollywood.

At 76, Brooks, whose flawless smile and sparkling eyes can still conjure up the glamour of her early publicity photos, has only recently returned to active performing after nearly two decades of obscure “semi-retirement.”

“I started out just thinking I would make a living out of my boogie piano playing,” she recalled in a recent conversation in the lounge of the Roosevelt Hotel, “and I never thought it would come to this.”

Interestingly, although Brooks receives surprisingly few mentions in R&B; histories and has rarely performed in Los Angeles in the last 25 years, no less than three people spotted her during the interview and asked for autographs. Two remembered her local television show in the early ‘50s--the first TV variety program to be hosted by a black entertainer.

“It all happened kind of suddenly,” she explained. “I had appeared a few times on another show when the producer called me up and asked if I’d like to do my own show. Naturally, I didn’t believe him, but he called back the next week and said, ‘Please, Miss Brooks, get your tunes together, because we’d like to put you on at 9 o’clock this Sunday.’ And that was it--’The Hadda Brooks Show’ on KLAC (now KCOP).”

Like many local television programs of the period, Brooks’ show had limited production values.

“Oh, it was very basic,” she said with a chuckle. “They sat me at the grand piano and opened up the top. 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.”

Brooks, who was born in Boyle Heights and still lives there in a house her father built, had started out in the mid-’40s as a boogie-woogie pianist. “Swingin’ the Boogie,” her initial recording, also was the first release from Modern Records, a company that eventually became a potent force in the dynamic post-war Los Angeles R&B; scene.

It all began, according to Brooks, when she was rehearsing some accompaniment music for a children’s dance troupe.

“I was trying to get a whole bunch of different rhythms from ‘The Poet and Peasant’ overture,” she recalled. “I got the waltz and the 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.’

“So I worked up a boogie, and he recorded it. Now, understand, that man--his name was Jules BiHari--didn’t even have a record company; he was a jukebox repairman. But he took me into the studio and paid for the time. And he pressed the records himself at this little place he had in San Pedro. He’d get an order for 25 records, and he’d press 25 records. You can imagine how amazed we all were when it became a hit.”

It was the first in a string of instrumental hits, and Modern Records--built around Brooks as the “Queen of Boogie”--went on to launch the careers of such artists as B. B. King, Etta James, Charles Brown and Jesse Belvin.

Her piano playing moved to the background while she was billed as an “extra special attraction” with Charlie Barnet’s big band at L.A.’s Million Dollar Theatre. Early in the run, Brooks began to sing, at Barnet’s request, as an adjunct to her instrumental boogies. The enthusiastic audience responses to her ballads started a singing career that peaked with hit recordings of “That’s My Desire,” “Trust in Me” and “Don’t Take Your Love From Me.”

Movie appearances followed, with a brief scene in director Vincente Minnelli’s “The Bad and the Beautiful” (singing “Temptation”) and an especially impressive nightclub performance singing “I Hadn’t Anyone ‘Til You” in the Humphrey Bogart-Gloria Grahame thriller “In a Lonely Place.”

Brooks spent long stretches of the ‘50s and ‘60s in Europe and Australia before her semi-retirement in 1971. She still blames her diminished popularity in this country on the dramatic changes taking place in pop music during the period.

“I got news for you,” she said. “I was doing lovely when rock ‘n’ roll came along. And I got very upset with it. I remember working in Michigan when all I could hear on the radio was ‘Don’t step on my blue suede shoes,’ and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m gone.’ And I was. Elvis put a lot of us out of business. I didn’t do the type of music he did. I was melodic. Still am.

“I’m not upset with him. But I was upset with the fickleness of people. It seemed as though they love you tonight, and if someone comes along with something new tomorrow, they put you down.”

“I guess that’s one of the reasons why I’m so pleased to receive this award,” concluded Brooks. “It’s a reminder that what I did all those years ago was really worthwhile, after all.”