Music / Theatre & dance
Shelton Brooks
1886–1975 · composer, pianist, vaudeville performer
Canadian-born songwriter who grew up in Detroit, where he first made his name, and wrote "Some of These Days" and "At the Darktown Strutters' Ball".
- Born
Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada- Died
Los Angeles County, California
aged 89- Detroit years
- 1901–1900s
- Field
- Music, Theatre & dance
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Shelton Brooks was born in Amherstburg, Ontario, across the river from Detroit, the son of a preacher, and taught himself music on his father's church pump organ in North Buxton. In 1901 the family moved to Detroit, and it was there that the teenager first made a name for himself in music and comedy, playing piano and entertaining in the city's cafés and vaudeville houses in a ragtime style; he never learned to read music. From Detroit he moved on to Chicago, where he wrote "Some of These Days" (1910), which became Sophie Tucker's lifelong signature song, and later "At the Darktown Strutters' Ball" (1916), one of the first jazz standards, recorded in 1917 by the Original Dixieland Jass Band. As a performer he was known for his impersonations of Bert Williams, appeared in Lew Leslie's Plantation Revue in 1922, worked in nightclubs and on CBS radio in the 1930s, and in the 1940s was a regular in Ken Murray's Blackouts in Los Angeles.
Highlights
- Family moved to Detroit in 1901; his career began there
- Wrote "Some of These Days" (1910), Sophie Tucker's signature song
- Wrote "At the Darktown Strutters' Ball" (1916)
- Appeared in Lew Leslie's Plantation Revue (1922)