When she was about five Uschi and her sister were removed by the authorities into a children's home in Engelsdorf, some ten kilometers away, where she turned to singing as a consolation.

The orphanage had been founded by Carmelite nuns in 1931, and somehow managed to remain an island of relative sanity, quietly ignoring government precepts on the centrality of Marxism–Leninism to children's education, while outside the country was transformed into a one-party Soviet-style socialist paradise-dictatorship.

[5] There was not at this stage any question of a musical education, but as a child she sang round the house, at school, and around town: word of her exceptional singing voice spread.

By the time she started work in the justice system she had already launched herself on the musical progression which would become her career In 1960, aged just 13, she made her first "genuine" stage appearance, singing well-loved Schlager songs in front of the workers at the large Langbein-Pfanhauser electroplating factory in Leipzig-Sellerhausen, not too far from her mother's apartment, which was also on the east side of the city.

By the time she was seventeen, still at school, she was also appearing as a singer-guitarist with "Studio Team", an amateur band with which at the weekends she undertook brief tours of Saxony.

[9] In 1970, Brüning undertook her first professional tour of East Germany, sharing the stages with the Günther Fischer quintet and Manfred Krug.

Ulbricht had loathed and despised jazz with a toxic passion worthy of National Socialism,[11] describing it as the "Affenkultur des Imperialismus".

[12][b] There being no printed copies available, East German singers wishing to perform western jazz songs were obliged to transcribe the music from foreign radio stations.

[1] Shortly after, this Brüning was among a number of high-profile figures from the East German arts establishment to sign a letter of protest against the government decision to deprive the singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann of his citizenship.

As a high profile public entertainer she enjoyed exceptional travel privileges, and in 1981 she won third prize at the Kärnten International festival in Klagenfurt.

[9] In 1989, touring with Ali Haurand's European Jazz Ensemble, she performed "Ich mach ein Lied aus Stille" together with the children's author-poet Eva Strittmatter.

[9] Post-reunification, in 1993 she took part in the Berlin Jazz Festival, appearing in "Programme 4", in concert with the actress Annekathrin Bürger, the chansoniste Barbara Kellerbauer and the opera singer Carola Nossek.