The musicologist Robert Palmer, writing in Rolling Stone, stated, "His music is witty, soulful and ferociously energetic, brimming with novel harmonic turnarounds, committed vocals and simply astonishing guitar work.

"[4] Jon Pareles, a music critic for the New York Times, wrote, "He sings in a rowdy baritone, sliding and rasping in songs that celebrate lust, fulfilled and unfulfilled; his guitar solos are pointed and unhurried, with a tone that slices cleanly across the beat.

[3] He learned to play blues from his banjo-picking grandfather but did not think about a career in music until he moved to Port Arthur, Texas, in the early 1950s.

Clifton Chenier heard Brooks strumming his guitar on his front porch in Port Arthur and offered him a job in his touring band.

[citation needed] Embarking on a solo career, he began calling himself Guitar Jr. and signed with the Goldband label, based in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

[6] His singles for the label included the regional hit "Family Rules", which remains a favorite of the swamp pop idiom in southern Louisiana and southeast Texas.

In 1974, Brooks participated in a multi-artist tour of Europe and recorded an album, Sweet Home Chicago, for the French label Black & Blue.

There he attracted the attention of Bruce Iglauer, the head of the fledgling Alligator Records, who had previously seen him at the Avenue Lounge on the city’s West Side.

Eric Clapton, performing in Chicago as part of his "From the Cradle" tour, honored Brooks by inviting the bluesman on stage for an impromptu jam at the blues club Buddy Guy's Legends.

With fellow Gulf Coast blues veterans Long John Hunter and Phillip Walker (both of whom he had known and played with in the 1950s in Port Arthur), Brooks released Lone Star Shootout in 1999.

Besides his live and recorded performances, Brooks appeared in the films Blues Brothers 2000 and The Express: The Ernie Davis Story and in two UK television commercials for Heineken beer.