Don Brooks had a career that took him from playing blues harp in folk clubs in Texas to playing sessions with
Billy Joel,
the Bee Gees, and
Diana Ross on some of their best-selling records. A native of Dallas, he always had a love of music and turned toward the harmonica after hearing Sonny Terry playing on an album in the early '60s. By the mid-'60s, he was playing clubs and coffeehouses, locally accompanying blues legends like
Mance Lipscomb and
Lightnin' Hopkins and up-and-coming artists such as
Jerry Jeff Walker.
Brooks outgrew the limited folk/blues scene in Dallas and moved to New York in 1967, where he became a popular player in Greenwich Village. He performed with
David Bromberg and
John Hammond Jr., and by the early '70s, he had become a member of
Waylon Jennings' backing band. He became one of the top studio musicians in New York and appeared on records such as
the Bee Gees'
Main Course,
Yoko Ono's Feeling the Space,
Judy Collins' Judith, and
the James Gang's Newborn during the '70s. By the '80s, his harmonica, with its simple, precise dexterity, was a virtual fixture on the New York music scene, and his instrument graced the records of
the Talking Heads among numerous others, as well as the Roger Miller-composed Broadway musical Big River, and he was heard for weeks on public television on the soundtrack of Ken Burns' documentary series The Civil War.
Brooks died of leukemia in New York during the fall of 2000. ~ Bruce Eder