American pianist, vocalist and composer, billed as “Queen of the Boogie,” who was Inducted in the Rhythm and Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1993.
Her first recording, “Swingin’ the Boogie”, for Modern Records, was a regional hit in 1945. Another R&B Top Ten hit, “Out of the Blue,” was her most famous song. She sang at Hawaii’s statehood ceremony in 1959 and was asked for a private audience by Pope Pius XII.
In the 1970s, she commuted to Europe for performances in nightclubs and festivals. She performed rarely in the United States, living for many years in Australia. Queen of the Boogie, a compilation of recordings from the 1940s, was released in 1984. Two years later her manager Alan Eichler brought her out of a 16-year retirement to open a jazz room at Perino’s in Los Angeles, after which she continued to perform in nightclubs in Hollywood, San Francisco, and New York City.
In 2007, a 72-minute documentary on Brooks’s life, Queen of the Boogie, directed by Austin Young and Barry Pett, was presented at the Los Angeles Silver Lake Film Festival.
In 1940, Brooks married Earl “Shug” Morrison, of the Harlem Globetrotters, but was widowed within a year, and she never married again. She died on 21 November 2002 at the age of 86 at White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles after open-heart surgery.
Link to Wikipedia biography