DISCOGRAPHY 2001-2020 (20CD)
Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977) was an American
singer and actress. Waters frequently performed jazz, swing, and pop
music on the Broadway stage and in concerts. She began her career in the
1920s singing blues. Her notable recordings include "Dinah", "Stormy
Weather", "Taking a Chance on Love", "Heat Wave", "Supper Time", "Am I
Blue?", "Cabin in the Sky", "I'm Coming Virginia", and her version of
"His Eye Is on the Sparrow".
Waters was the second African American to be nominated for an Academy
Award, the first African American to star on her own television show,
and the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Primetime
Emmy Award.
Ethel Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, on October 31, 1896
(some sources incorrectly state her birth year as 1900 to
African-American mother Louise Anderson (1881–1962). Her birth was the
result of the rape of teenaged Louise Anderson by 17-year-old John
Wesley (a.k.a. Wesley John) Waters (1878–1901), a pianist and family
acquaintance from a middle-class African-American background. Waters'
family was very fair-skinned, his mother in particular. Waters played no
role in raising his daughter. Many sources, including Ethel herself,
reported for years that her mother was 12 or 13 years old at the time of
the rape, and 13 when Ethel was born. Stephen Bourne opens his 2007
biography, Ethel Waters: Stormy Weather, with the statement that
genealogical research has shown that Louise Anderson may have been 15 or
16 years old.
Soon after Waters was born, her mother married Norman Howard, a railroad
worker, with whom she had a daughter, Juanita Howard, Ethel's
half-sister. Ethel used the surname Howard as a child and then reverted
to using the surname Waters. She was raised in poverty by Sally
Anderson, her grandmother, who worked as a housemaid, and with two of
her aunts and an uncle.[ Waters never lived in the same place for more
than 15 months. Of her difficult childhood, she said "I never was a
child. I never was cuddled, liked, or understood by my family."
Waters grew tall, standing 5 feet 9.5 inches (1.765 m) in her teens.
According to jazz historian and archivist Rosetta Reitz, Waters's birth
in the North and her peripatetic (or nomadic) life exposed her to many
cultures. Waters first married in 1910 at the age of 13, but her husband
was abusive, and she soon left the marriage and became a maid in a
Philadelphia hotel, working for $4.75 per week. On her 17th birthday,
she attended a costume party at a nightclub on Juniper Street. She was
persuaded to sing two songs and impressed the audience so much that she
was offered professional work at the Lincoln Theatre in Baltimore. The
job singing and dancing in Baltimore netted her $9 a week, with two of
her friends weekly skimming $16 for getting her the job.
After her start in Baltimore, Waters toured on the black vaudeville
circuit, in her words "from nine until unconscious." Despite her early
success, she fell on hard times and joined a carnival traveling in
freight cars headed for Chicago. She enjoyed her time with the
carnival and recalled, "the roustabouts and the concessionaires were
the kind of people I'd grown up with, rough, tough, full of larceny
towards strangers, but sentimental and loyal to their friends and
co-workers." But she did not last long with them and soon headed south
to Atlanta, where she worked in the same club as Bessie Smith. Smith
demanded that Waters not compete in singing blues opposite her. Waters
conceded and sang ballads and popular songs. Around 1919, Waters moved
to Harlem and became a performer in the Harlem Renaissance of the
1920s.
Her first Harlem job was at Edmond's Cellar, a club with a black
patronage that specialized in popular ballads. She acted in a
blackface comedy, Hello 1919. Jazz historian Rosetta Reitz pointed out
that by the time Waters returned to Harlem in 1921, women blues
singers were among the most powerful entertainers in the country. In
1921, Waters became the fifth black woman to make a record, for tiny
Cardinal Records. She later joined Black Swan, where Fletcher
Henderson was her accompanist. Waters later commented that Henderson
tended to perform in a more classical style than she preferred, often
lacking "the damn-it-to-hell bass."
Waters performs with Count Basie in Stage Door Canteen (1943)
She recorded for Black Swan from 1921 through 1923. Her contract with
Harry Pace made her the highest paid black recording artist at the
time. In early 1924, Paramount bought Black Swan, and she stayed with
Paramount through the year.
Around that time, Waters was approached by Maury Greenwald for the
London run of Plantation Days,[18] although she later joined the
company on its return to Chicago in August 1923, as an "extra added
attraction" to "save the fast-flopping revue".
She started working with Pearl Wright, and they toured in the South.
In 1924, Waters played at the Plantation Club on Broadway. She also
toured with the Black Swan Dance Masters.
She first recorded for Columbia in 1925, achieving a hit with "Dinah".
With Earl Dancer, she joined what was called the "white time" Keith
Vaudeville Circuit, a vaudeville circuit performing for white
audiences and combined with screenings of silent movies. They received
rave reviews in Chicago and earned the unheard-of salary of US $1,250
in 1928. In September 1926, Waters recorded "I'm Coming Virginia",
composed by Donald Heywood with lyrics by Will Marion Cook. She is
often wrongly attributed as the author. The following year, Waters
sang it in a production of Africana at Broadway's Daly's Sixty-Third
Street Theatre. In 1929, Waters and Wright arranged the unreleased
Harry Akst song "Am I Blue?", which was used in the movie On with the
Show and became a hit and her signature song....
(Wikipedia)