Shelton Brooks

Shelton Brooks (May 4, 1886 – September 6, 1975) was a Canadian-born composer and performer who worked across vaudeville, Broadway, radio, and film during a career spanning several decades. Born in Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada, Brooks grew up in a household led by a preacher father, and he taught himself to play music on the church's pump organ. His family relocated to Detroit, Michigan, in 1901, where he first established his reputation in music and comedy. Though he never learned to read music formally, his compositions were widely sought after for a brash, energetic style that stood apart from the more restrictive conventions of the Victorian era.

Brooks performed on the vaudeville circuit as a singer and pianist, and was notably recognized as an imitator of Bert Williams. Alongside his performing career, he built a substantial reputation as a songwriter, authoring some of the most commercially successful popular songs of the early twentieth century. His composition "Some of These Days" reached headliner Sophie Tucker in 1909, and Tucker adopted it as her theme song, performing it regularly for the following 55 years. His 1916 song "At the Darktown Strutters' Ball" became another major hit. Among his other compositions are "I Wonder Where My Easy Rider's Gone," "Walkin' the Dog," "Somewhere in France," and "There'll Come a Time." He composed "Some of These Days" at the Pekin Theatre. Brooks also recorded alongside vocalists Ethel Waters and Sara Martin, providing piano accompaniments on those sessions.

His Broadway career ran from 1922 to 1949 and included appearances in several productions. He appeared in Lew Leslie's Plantation Revue, which opened in 1922, and subsequently performed in Buddies and Dixie to Broadway. Following the sudden death of his partner Florence Mills in 1927, Brooks stepped away from stage productions and directed his efforts toward nightclub work. During the 1930s he hosted a radio program on the CBS network, and he is credited as a contributor to the music in the 1932 film Harlem Is Heaven. In the 1940s, Brooks became a regular performer in Ken Murray's Blackouts, a long-running burlesque revue that played in both New York and Los Angeles, with his final Broadway credit being Blackouts of 1949.