From Nightclub to Congregation (and Back Again): Part 1

Born in the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago, singer Charlene Brooks, the daughter of Polish Holocaust survivors, developed an early love for music listening to Broadway and Barbara Streisand.

After attending Loyola University of Chicago she “cut her teeth” at the jazz and cabaret nightclubs of Rush St. and has since performed in a variety of musical genres at events ranging from The Taste of Chicago to State and County Fairs, besides also working as a stage actress and wedding singer.

After moving to Skokie she began singing Jewish liturgical music at Congregation Bene Shalom (4435 W. Oakton), a temple specializing in services for the deaf and hearing impaired, where she had to learn both Hebrew and sign language. She also frequently sings at funerals, performing both liturgical songs and the often-odd requests of family members.

This spring Brooks, who describes music as “my job, my hobby, my therapy, and who I am,” has two musical variety shows at the Skokie Theatre (7924 N. Lincoln Ave.): a second iteration of her retrospective show “Confessions of a Cabaret Cantor,” this Saturday, as well as a comic reflection on her parents entitled, “Life Stinks and Other Things My Mother Taught Me,” on April 2nd. Tickets for both shows are $20 dollars in advance and $25 at the door.        

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Skokie Patch: What was the first type of music you first become interested in? Did you come from a musical family?

Charlene Brooks: No, actually. Both of my parents were survivors of the Holocaust, so I had a kind of unusual growing-up experience. Musically, I listened to the records they had and the radio and I’d be home because they worked six days a week and owned their own business. I was a latchkey child, I used to sing and dance around the living room alone . . . To fill my time I sang.

SP: What were your first gigs like?

CB: I quickly had to figure things out. I had no idea how to get musicians together. I had no idea what I was doing, but that’s never stopped me. I have never known how to what I was going to do, but that never stopped me from doing it anyway. Little by little I got some musicians to accompany me and started doing Top Forty clubs six hours a night.

I was doing all these clubs and working long hours, screaming until I lost my voice. Then I decided to get a job on Rush Street, which at that time had more clubs than you could count. I sang in all of them, but the place where I spent the most time was called Blondie’s. There were many, many musicians around, mostly jazz [artists].

It was great because not everyone gets the opportunity to learn the way I did. There are people who go to school and take classes and go to college and have a classical training. I didn’t learn that way. I got a job and stood in front of people learning what worked and what didn’t work by how people responded. I cut my teeth in clubs there aren’t places for people to work like that, not anymore.

SP: When do you think the Rush Street jazz scene ended? Was it a slow decline or do you remember one day when you realized the clubs weren’t what they used to be?

CB: I got in on the tail end of it, and it seemed a year after I left it was pretty much gone gone. It was sad. My club turned into a Starbucks.

I went there [to the Rush Street jazz clubs] to get established, and people responded really well, so I said to myself “let’s go for it.

SP: You also sing Jewish liturgical music as well, how long have you been a cantor at Bene Shalom?

CB: I’ve been there almost fifteen years. I was a member and my son was in Sunday school with the rabbi [Rabbi Douglas Goldhammer] and when I told him I was a singer his eyes kind of lit up because they had a soloist there who was planning to leave. One thing led to another and I was asked to sing something for Chanukah. It freaked me out, to be quite honest, because that wasn’t my field of expertise.

SP: Did you have that kind of music [Jewish liturgical music] around when you were growing up?

CB: No. I grew up secularly Jewish. That’s one of the things that happens sometimes with survivors. They are hard-core in their hearts and souls Jewish, but religion is tough; there is a lot of anxiety around it . . .  

When the opportunity came to sing for High Holidays it took me six months to prepare. It’s all in Hebrew and I had to learn the melodies. It’s all a cappella as well, with no instrumentation.

It was very stressful so I locked myself up and worked and worked and became obsessive about it. It just seeped into me and began to feel like the right thing.

It was a difficult transition at first because with High Holidays you don’t want to screw it up! Some people don’t come that often to temple but they come to High Holidays. If you screw it up, you’ve ruined it for everybody.

It is easier now but it’s like a living thing, you know. It’s a very serious thing when you’re leading people in prayer. I try to take everything that I do very seriously whether it’s doing a show with show-tunes or singing at temple. I want people to feel something.