Blue Cheer

Guitar work has been handled by Andrew "Duck" MacDonald since that time. Her most famous songs include:. Last tour was a club tour of England in 2004. Original members Dickie Peterson and Paul Whaley re-located to Germany in early 90's where they still live. She died of heart failure in Los Angeles at the age of 86. Last release was Live in Japan, 1999. After an early retirement, which she spent in Hawaii and Australia, she returned to Los Angeles to be rediscovered in 1986. Group still exists as of 2005. In the 1950s, she was one of the first African American women to host her own television show (The Hadda Brooks Show).

After Leigh Stevens was replaced by Randy Holden, formerly of Los Angeles garage rock band The Other Half, in 1969, Blue Cheer's style changed to a more commercial hard rock sound a la Steppenwolf or Iron Butterfly. In the course of her career, Brooks also appeared in films, mainly as a pianist and/or lounge singer (Out of the Blue, 1947; In a Lonely Place, 1950, performing "I Hadn't Anyone 'Til You"). 1970 saw the release of Human Being and then 1971's Oh! Pleasant Hope. Born into a prominent African American family from Georgia, she was taught to play the piano from the age of four and later studied classical music. The group underwent several personnel changes after the 1968 release of Outsideinside, and then through yet more changes during and after 1969's New! Improved! Blue Cheer (different guitarists on side 1 and 2), followed by Blue Cheer. A versatile performer whose career spanned almost six decades and whose repertoire included boogiefied classics, blues, ballads and torch songs, Brooks became known as "the Queen of Boogie Woogie" right after the release, in 1945, of her first single, "Swingin' the Boogie". Julian Cope has written, "In 1968, nothing but nothing in America and Britain sounded as brutal as Blue Cheer except for the Velvet Underground." [1] (http://www.juliancope.com/unsung/features/index.php?id=4). She was born Hadda Hopgood in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, California [1] (http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/pase/bhproject/index06.htm).

The band has been subsequently acclaimed as an influence on garage rock, punk music, heavy metal, and grunge. Hadda Brooks (October 29, 1916 - November 21, 2002) was a noted African American pianist, vocalist and composer. The group's sound was hard to categorize, but was definitely blues-based, psychedelic, and very loud. "Say It with a Kiss". (The single peaked at #14 on the Billboard pop charts, and the album peaked at #11.). "Don't Take Your Love From Me". Their first hit was a cover version of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" from their debut album Vincebus Eruptum (1968). "Romance in the Dark".

The band was named after a strain of LSD promoted by underground chemist and Grateful Dead backer Owsley Stanley; the drug had taken its name from a popular detergent. "That's My Desire". Original personnel were singer/bass guitarist Dick Peterson, guitarist Leigh Stevens and drummer Paul Whaley. "Swingin' the Boogie". Blue Cheer was a San Francisco based power trio of the late 1960s.