Album Review

In the late '40s, Los Angeles' Central Avenue was the West Coast equivalent of 125th Street in New York's Harlem, and it jumped to boogie and slow-danced to cocktail blues. Straddling both camps was Hadda Brooks, a classically trained pianist and drop-dead gorgeous crooner. She scored hits on Modern Records with boogie-woogie instrumentals and romantic ballads, and went on to become the first black woman to host a television show. It's a fascinating story, one largely forgotten until Brooks came out of retirement in 1987 to play the cabaret circuit. In 1994, 25 of her Modern sides were assembled on That's My Desire. Now, Time Was When features 15 new songs by the 80-year-old singer.

Brooks' arthritic hands can no longer replicate the keyboard pyrotechnics of her youth, nor can her voice recapture its lustrous sensuality. Rather than serve up a pale imitation of a lost past, she has revamped her style. She no longer stretches out her words into the elongated purr of a young woman in love for the first time; she now clips her phrasing into the pithy comments of a woman impatient with games and explanations. On "Can You Look Me in the Eyes and Say We're Through?" she delivers her questions with the dry irony and self-assurance of a cross-examining attorney who knows the answers.

On the title track, Brooks sings, "Time was when you said lots of silly things to please me," with the older but wiser air of a woman who won't get fooled again. She recycles two Modern hits, "I Feel So Good" and "You Won't Let Me Go," tackles show tunes by the likes of Richard Rodgers, delivers a saucy version of Bessie Smith's "Need a Little Sugar" and provides new compositions of her own. Working with only a bassist, guitarist and cellist, she strips away the cutesiness of contemporary cabaret to reveal a kind of blues that fits the dignity and wisdom of a true survivor. (RS 729)

GEOFFREY HIMES

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