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Ethel Waters
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T[H]e first “Black Superstar,” Ethel Waters, was an innovator who opened all the theatrical doors which had been closed to black performers of her day. Her achievements came with struggle, and she fought vehemently to achieve solo star status in the white world of night clubs, Broadway Theater, radio and films. Ethel recorded for Columbia Records and before long she was headlining at Harlem’s celebrated Cotton Club. This accumulating popularity gained Ethel respect by communicating her thoughts of racial inequality in her songs and more importantly her attitude. White Americans began to understand the difficulties of black Americans simply by seeing Ethel and realizing that this was the first black American they have seen perform. Ethel ... appeared on Broadway and while acting in "As Thousands Cheer", authors Moss Hart and Irving Berlin invited her to attend the weekly cast parties.
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Ethel Waters was one of the most popular African American singers and actresses of the 1920s. She moved to New York in 1919 after touring in vaudeville shows as a singer and a dancer. She made her recording debut in 1921 on Cardinal records with "The New York Glide" and "At the New Jump Steady Ball", but switched over to African American owned Black Swan label, and recorded "Down Home Blues" and "Oh Daddy" the first Blues numbers for that company. She frequently sang with Fletcher Henderson during the early 1920s, but by the mid-1920s Waters had became more of a pop singer. She performed in a number of musical revues throughout the rest of the decade and appeared a couple of films, including "Check and Double Check" with Amos 'n' Andy and Duke Ellington. By the end of the 1930s she was a big star on Broadway.
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Ethel Waters had a long and varied career, and was one of the first true jazz singers to record. Defying racism with her talent and bravery, Waters became a stage and movie star in the 1930s and '40s without leaving the U.S. She grew up near Philadelphia and, unlike many of her contemporaries, developed a clear and easily understandable diction. Originally classified as a blues singer (and she could sing the blues almost on the level of a Bessie Smith), Waters' jazz-oriented recordings of 1921-1928 swung before that term was even coined. A star early on at theaters and nightclubs, Waters introduced such songs as "Dinah," "Am I Blue" (in a 1929 movie), and "Stormy Weather." She made a smooth transition from jazz singer of the 1920s to a pop music star of the '30s, and she was a strong influence on many vocalists including Mildred Bailey, Lee Wiley, and Connee Boswell. Waters spent the latter half of the 1930s touring with a group headed by her husband-trumpeter Eddie Mallory, and appeared on Broadway (Mamba's Daughter in 1939) and in the 1943 film Cabin in the Sky; in the latter she introduced "Taking a Chance on Love," "Good for Nothing Joe," and the title cut. In later years Waters was seen in nonmusical dramatic roles, and after 1960 she mostly confined her performances to religious work for the evangelist Billy Graham.
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Ethel Waters had a long and distinguished career as a vocalist and actress, though the years she spent as a blues singer were limited to the early 1920s. With smooth, well-defined phrasing and a meticulous sense of timing, Waters' singing style rated with the best of the era's vocalists. Had she dedicated herself to solely singing the blues, Waters might well have been a great blues singer.
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Tough, uncompromising, courageous, and ambitious, Ethel Waters became one of the first African American women to be given equal billing with white stars on the Broadway stage. In 1943, the film version of her Broadway success, Cabin in the Sky, established her as Hollywood's first Black-leading lady. In such plays as Mamba's Daughters and films including The Member of the Wedding, she shattered the myth that Black women could perform only as singers. For her work in Pinky, she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, the second African American to be so honored.
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Ethel Waters grew up in Chester, Pennsylvania. She didn't have much schooling. By the age of eight she had a job as a domestic worker and was married by the age of 13. She first worked on the stage at the Lincoln Theatre in Baltimore, Maryland, where she sang "St. Louis Blues." She then toured the South, billed as "Sweet Mama Stringbean," with carnivals, and tent and vaudeville shows.
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Ethel Waters