Brooks actually preferred ballads to boogie-woogie, but worked up her style by listening to Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, and Meade Lux Lewis records.
She was the second African-American woman to host her own television show-after Hazel Scott with The Hazel Scott Show on DuMont in 1950-with The Hadda Brooks Show (1957),[REF] a combination talk and musical entertainment show, aired on Los Angeles' KCOP-TV.