Hadda Brooks - Out Of The Blue: The Singles & Albums Collection 1945-53 (2021)

Hadda Brooks was a classically-trained pianist who turned to jazz and boogie woogie and became a stylish and distinctive singer of ballads, to the extent that in the late 1940s she enjoyed three Top 10 R&B hits with sophisticated vocal recordings. Basing her piano style initially on that of boogie woogie pioneers like Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, she developed a unique strand of material which involved re-interpreting classical pieces in boogie woogie idiom. This great-value 50-track 2-CD set comprises selected A & B sides of her singles on the Modern, London and Okeh labels during these years, plus selected titles from the albums “Femme Fatale” and “Swings The Boogie” on Crown, performing in her early years with a small jazz group and later both solo and with her Trio. It naturally includes those three Top 10 hits “That’s My Desire”, “Out Of The Blue” and “What Have I Done”. She was one of the more unusual artists of the post-war decades, straddling stylistic boundaries in her highly individual manner, and this selective compilation of her output in what was an important first decade or so of her career provides an entertaining showcase for her eclectic style and talents.