BROOKS, SHELTON

BROOKS, SHELTON. Songwriter (4 May 1886 in Amesburg, Ontario, Canada; 6 September 1975 in Los Angeles, California). As a child he taught himself to play on the family house organ while an older brother pumped. He began his professional career at the age of sixteen as a cafe and theater pianist in Detroit, Michigan. Later he settled in Chicago, Illinois, where he continued to play piano—at the Monogram, Pekin, and Grand theaters as well as in nightclubs. He began writing songs about 1909, of…