Shelton Brooks

Popular music and jazz composer who wrote some of the biggest hits of the first third of the 20th century (May 4, 1886 - September 6, 1975). Brooks was born in Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada (and died in Los Angeles, California). His family moved to Detroit, Michigan in 1901. Shelton Brooks sang, played piano, and performed on the vaudeville circuit (notably, as a Bert Williams imitator), as well as having a successful songwriting career. His first hit song was "Some of These Days", which he was able to get to headliner Sophie Tucker in 1909. Tucker adopted it as her theme song, and performed it regularly for the next 55 years. He starred in several 1920s musical comedies After the sudden death of his partner Florence Mills in 1927, he stopped appearing in stage shows and pursued a nightclub act. He also had a radio show on the CBS network in the 1930s. In the 1940s he became a regular in Ken Murray's "Blackouts", a long-running salute to burlesque that played in both New York and Los Angeles.