Earl Brooks and his Plantation Boys - Thirteen Minutes (Nabor 129), 1965
Indiana country and rockabilly music is what some people call a "rabbit hole". If you dig deeper, you'll find more and more interesting stuff, connections you never made before, and you'll discover music never heard of. And I'm just beginning to dive into this hole. One of Indianapolis' many musicians was Earl Brooks, who played country music at the local clubs and was involved in Jerry Lee Williams' record labels during the 1950s and 1960s.
Earl Anderson Brooks was born on March 13, 1922, to Ray Anderson and Bessie Orpha (Gladson) Brooks. Brooks had three brothers and two sisters. The family were Hawkins County, Tennessee, natives and father Ray was a carpenter by trade. By 1935, the Brooks family had moved north to Indiana. They first lived in Wayne, adjacent to Indianapolis, where Brooks also attended high school. The family later settled in Plainfield, another suburb on the outskirts of the greater Indy metropolis.
Brooks served in the US Army during World War II and following the war, took up music. By the mid 1950s, he had made the acquaintance of local guitarist Jerry Lee Williams. Joined by Stan Cox, the trio went into the record business to found three local labels: Solid Gold in 1956, Nabor in 1958, and Yolk in 1960. To which extend Brooks and Cox were actually involved remains unclear at the moment, as Williams seems to have been the main man behind these labels.
Brooks was given the debut release on the newly formed Nabor label in 1958, which appeared around September 1958 (at this early stage of the label, the actual record had no catalog number assigned). The disc featured "Open Up Your Heart" b/w "Restrained", recorded with Brooks' brother-in-law Bob Pauley's band, the Plantation Boys. Pauley was a skilled guitarist and played country and rockabilly music in the city's clubs with different musicians (including rockabilly cult hero Tommy Lam). Brooks' western swing-tinged songs were far away from the hep cat sounds of Lam and other Indiana rockers, however.
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| Billboard November 11, 1958, review |
Brooks wouldn't record again until the mid 1960s, when he released two more records on Nabor. Compared to his previous single, "I Wish (I Didn't Love You)" b/w "Oh, What a Price I Paid (for Loving You)" (Nabor #116) featured a more polished and better produced sound with a moaning steel guitar and female vocal chorus, coming nearer to the urban Nashville trend - though it remained stone-hard country music. His third Nabor disc was comprised of the death row lament "Thirteen Minutes" and "Tonight" (Nabor #129) and both songs were handled by Starday's in-house publishing arm. Brooks was a bit of a songwriter; BMI has a total of 10 songs registered by him. He wrote or co-wrote a few songs that were recorded by other Nabor artists, including "My Future's In the Past" by Elizabeth Johnson, "If You Belonged to Me" and "Dead End", both recorded by Jack Shaw & the Kings, as well as "A Teenage Birthday", the flip side to Tommy Lam's infamous "Speed Limit".
There was a Earl Brooks who recorded with a band called the "Southern Playboys" on the Southaven, Mississippi, based Spite record label. This artist was likely a different singer.
Nabor continued to release country music well into the 1970s but no records by Brooks anymore. He probably kept on performing in Indianapolis and surrounding areas. In 1970, both his father and his mother died, Brooks unexpectedly passed away a few years later on March 2, 1976, shortly before his 54th birthday. He is buried at Maple Hill Cemetery in Plainfield, Indiana.
According to his obituary, Brooks was a "self-employed musician" at the time of his passing, suggesting that he had no day job but working full-time to earn a living. Furthermore, he was apparently a bachelor, as he had no children and was probably never married.
See also
Sources
• Official records accessed through Ancestry.com
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