The collection of Michael Brooks has been acquired by the UCSB Library to join other important collections in its renowned archive of 78rpm recordings. Brooks worked for many years as a producer for Columbia Records, Bertelsman Music Group (BMG) and ultimately Sony Music Entertainment in New York City in their catalog division. Brooks was hired in 1971 by legendary Columbia executive John Hammond (who launched the careers of everybody from Billie Holliday to Bruce Springsteen) to produce reissues for the company's reissue program. Brooks produced dozens of important reissues for Columbia and Sony, including reissues of Billie Holliday, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and others. He has had a long and storied career and between 1972 and 2008 he received 16 Grammy nominations and won six for his work.
Brooks’s collection contains over 10,000 78rpm discs from the decades prior to 1950 that produced an incredible wellspring of classic American jazz, blues and popular music. The collection became a source of many reissues and box sets produced by him and others for Columbia/Sony/BMG and independent labels such as Time-Life Records, Mosaic Records and Bear Family Records.
The Michael Brooks Collection is currently being cataloged and portions will be digitized and put online through the Discography of American Historical Recordings. Recordings that have been cataloged can be found in UC Library Search. Digital copies can be requested through a Special Collections Research Account.
For more information on the collection or assistance in using the materials, please contact Special Research Collections staff at special@library.ucsb.edu.
Photo credit: Scott Newirth.
