From Grindstone Magazine #9, Spring 99:
"Our Miss Hadda Brooks"

One performer who is, thankfully, alive to reap the fruits of all this renewed attention is Hadda Brooks. A decade ago, Hadda's old albums on the Crown label, not to mention her 45s and 78s, would be routinely stepped on by jazz and R&B collectors in old record stores and juke box warehouses as these vinyl fiends made their frenzied searches for the more "respectable" artists they favoured. You see, Hadda Brooks was neither fish nor fowl, not primitive enough for blues and boogie fans, nor did she have the improvisational skills valued by jazzers. She was, and is, however, perfect for the Ultra Lounge crowd. Around the country, wherever the cocktail Nation gathers, our Miss Hadda Brooks is once again a star.

Hadda was born Hadda Hopgood in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles County, on October 29, 1916, to a prominent family. Her mother was a doctor and her father was a Los Angeles County deputy sheriff. Her paternal grandfather was a man of means who owned a large amount of real estate.In an era when black people divided themselves into a self-imposed catse system based on the amount of melanin they possessed, John Hopgood was at the top of the heap, due to his light skin and gray eyes. Hadda remembered, "People thought he was white... I took his coloring mostly, and my sister's a little darker, like my mother. It wasn't until folks saw him taking us out for walks that they started wondering what color he was." Her Boyle Heights neighborhood, in those days, was largely Jewish and was also home to people of a number of other ethnic groups. Today, it is almost entirely Hispanic, as is the surrounding larger area known as East LA.

Beginning at age four, Hadda studied piano for twenty years with Florence Bruni. After graduating from the city's Polytechnic High School, he continued her classical music training in Chicago at Northwestern University and , back home, at Chapman College. In her early 20s, he took a job as a rehearsal pianist at the Willie Covan Dance Studio in South-Central LA. Among Covan's student were movie stars like Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Shirley Temple. Through Covan, she met basketball player Earl "Shug" Morrison of the Broadway Clowns, a comedy team similar to the Harlem Globetrotters. Her year-long marriage to Morrison ended when he died of pneumonia. In 1945, she met the man she still calls the "love of my life", Jules Bihari, a juke box operator who would also be her career mentor. Bihari was the oldest child in a large family of Hungarian Jews whom he would bring together to run Modern Records, one of the most successful of the post-war independent record companies. Bihari spotted Hadda as she was looking over some sheet music at California Music Company, downtown at 8th and Hill Streets. He asked if she could play boogie woogie. When she replied that she didn't know, he said that if she could come up with one song within a week, he would spend hi $800 recording her. Bihari started his  Modern Music label to release Hadda's recording of "Swinging The Boogie," which was soon being heard on KFWB disc jockey Frank Bull's local radio show and in juke boxes up and down the West Coast. Over the next year, Modern brought her back into the studio a number of times to cut more of the boogies her new audience demanded.

At a booking at Los Angeles' Million Dollar Theater, bandleader Charlie Barnet encouraged her to sing something for her encore. Her singing went so well that Jules started recording her smoky vocals for which today's fans worship her. These included a cover of Charlie Brown's "You Won't Let Me Go" and a song she heard Frankie Laine doing at Billy Berg's jazz club in Hollywood, "That's My Desire." Other Modern best sellers by Hadda were "Trust In Me," "Honey, Honey, Honey" and several boogie versions of the classics she had spent her life studying, including titles like "Humoresque Boogie" and "Polonaise Boogie." Hadda became one of the most popular of the boogie playing and singing babes of the late 40s: Nellie Lutcher, Hazel Scott, Julia Lee, Camille Howard and Mabel Scott. 

For her in-person appearances, Miss Brooks played small clubs with a trio as well as all the theaters with big bands like Barnet and Artie Shaw. Her luscious looks made her a natural for the big screen. She made a couple of "sepia" film shorts, 'Queen Of The Boogie' and 'Boogie Woogie Blues,' as well as a full-length all-black feature, "The Joint Is Jumpin'." Hadda also appeared in the more mainstream picture 'Out Of The Blue,' starring George Brent, Ann Dvorak and Carole Landis. The title song was written by Harry Nemo, composer of the standard, "Don't Take Your Love From Me," which Hadda also recorded.

For Columbia Pictures, Hadda was featured as a lounge singer in the Humphrey Bogart vehicle, 'In A Lonely Place,' in which she sang "I Hadn't Anyone 'Til You" as Bogey looked on. Convinced that Modern was not the kind of company to take her to the next step in her career, Hadda was signed to London Records, by Louis Jordan's former manager and Mercury Records co-founder Berle Adams and arranger Toots Camarata, who had written charts for Billie Holiday on Decca. London's brief excursion into hip music stalled after a year, despite the signing of Cab Calloway, the Treniers, Anita O'Day and Sticks McGhee, all of which resulted in little commercial action.

In 1951, Hadda again played a performer, singing "Temptation" in the Kirk Douglas-Lana Turner picture 'The Bad And The Beautiful.' A year later, she joined Okeh Records, where she cut a pair of tunes by successful black Los Angeles female songwriter, Jessie Mae Robinson, "You Let My Love Get Cold" and "I Went To Your Wedding."  The latter, originally done by Damita Jo with Steve Gibson's Red Caps, became a huge hit in a version by Patti Page that year. Also on Okeh, Hadda recorded her own song, "Jump Back Honey," which was subject of several cover versions, including those by Ella Mae Morse on Capitol, Jimmy Dorsey on Columbia, You Hit Parade's Dorothy Collins & Snooky Lanson on Decca and Vaughn Monroe & Sunny Gale on RCA Victor.

In 1953 she starred in her own TV show, seen each Sunday on LA's KLAC, Channel 11. The 26 week run was one of the first to star a black woman (Hazel Scott preceded Hadda with a show in New York). Hadda's manager, Abe Saperstein, also handled the Harlem Globetrotters and sent her on a tour of Europe with the team. Hadda spent the remainder of the 50s in Honolulu and the 60s in Australia, where she again had her own television show. Upon her return to the United States, she retired from music and moved back to her old neighborhood in Boyle Heights until her rediscovery in 1986. With a new manager, Alan Eichler, Hadda began to work again at a variety of venues across the country and even recorded a new CD for Virgin Records, which, coincidentally, bought the Modern catalog from the Bihari family. She also was awarded, in 1993, one of the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Pioneer Awards. Today, into her eighties, Hadda finds herself the darling of the trendy cocktail set and performs to them, along with a smattering of her older fans. With all the charm and sophistication which she has always brought to her appearances.

There's been 2 compilations put out in the last few years: 'That's My Desire' is an excellent compilation of the Modern recording sessions. It's got 25 cuts, and many instrumental and boogie woogie tunes, put out by Flair/Virgin. 'Jump Back Honey' is a collection of 15 songs from the OKeh sessions, put out by Columbia/Legacy. They both feature some great jazz guitar work. After a long retirement, Hadda is back. Pointblank/Virgin released 'Time Was When' in 1996. Her new album is entitled 'I Got News For You,' and is scheduled for release in March of '99, also on Virgin.

- Billy Vera