"Sweet Mama String Bean"
Background information:
Born October 31, 1896(1896-10-31) Chester, Pennsylvania, USA
Died September 1, 1977 (aged 80)
Chatsworth, California, USA
Genre(s): Jazz
Occupation(s): Actress, singer
Instrument(s): Vocals
Years active: 1925-1977
Associated acts:
Bessie Smith,
Alberta Hunter,
Josephine Baker
Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 - September 1, 1977) was an Oscar-nominated American blues vocalist and actress. She was the second African American to ever be nominated for an Academy Award.
Waters frequently performed jazz, big band, gospel, and
popular music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts.
Her best-known recording was her version of the spiritual,
"His Eye is on the Sparrow."
BIOGRAPHY:
Early life:
Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, to a thirteen-year-old mother who had been raped. She was raised in a violent, impoverished Philadelphia ward. Even though she was eventually adopted by her grandmother, she never lived in the same place for more than 15 months. She said of her difficult childhood, "I never was a child. I never was coddled, or liked, or understood by my family." Despite this unpromising start, Waters demonstrated early the love of language that so distinguishes her work. Moreover, according to her biographer Rosetta Reitz, Waters' birth in the North and her peripatetic life exposed her to many cultures. For the rest of her life, this lent to her interpretation of southern blues a unique sensibility that pulled in eclectic influences from across American music.
Waters married at the age of 13, but soon left her abusive husband, and became a maid in a Philadelphia hotel, working for US$4.75 per week. On her 17th birthday, on Halloween night in 1917, she attended a party in costume at a nightclub on Juniper Street. She was persuaded to sing two songs, and wowed the audience so much that she was offered professional work at the Lincoln Theatre in Baltimore, Maryland. She later recalled that she earned the rich sum of ten dollars a week, but her managers cheated her out of the tips her admirers threw on the stage.
Career:
Waters was very talented and had many achievements. After her start in Baltimore, she toured honkytonks in the South. As she described it later, "I used to work from nine until unconscious." Despite her early success, Waters fell on hard times and joined up with a carnival which traveled in freight cars to Chicago, Illinois. 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." She did not last long with them, though, and soon headed south to Atlanta, Georgia. There, she worked in the same club with Bessie Smith. Smith demanded that she not compete in singing the blues opposite her, and Waters conceded to the older woman and instead sang ballads and popular songs and danced. Though perhaps best known for her blues singing today, Waters was to go on to star in musicals, plays and TV and return to the blues only periodically.
She fell in love with a drug addict in this early period, but their stormy relationship ended with World War I. She moved to Harlem and became part of the Harlem Renaissance around 1919.
Waters obtained her first job around at Edmond's Cellar, a club that had a black patronage. She specialized in popular ballads, and became an actress in a blackface comedy called Hello 1919. Her biographer Rosetta Reitz points out that by the time Waters returned to Harlem in 1921, women blues singers were among the most powerful entertainers in the country, and that year Ethel became the fifth black woman to make a record. She later joined Black Swan Records, where Fletcher Henderson was her accompanist. Waters later commented that Henderson tended to perform in a more classical style than she would prefer, often lacking "the damn-it-to-hell bass." According to Waters, she influenced Henderson to practice in a "real jazz" style. She first recorded for Columbia Records in 1925; this recording was given a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998.
During the 1920s, Waters performed and/or was recorded with the ensembles of Will Marion Cook and Lovie Austin. As her career continued, she evolved toward being a blues and Broadway singer performing with artists such as Duke Ellington.
In 1933, Waters made a satirical all-black film entitled Rufus Jones for President. She went on to star at the Cotton Club, where, according to her autobiography, she "sang "Stormy Weather" from the depths of the private hell in which I was being crushed and suffocated." She took a role in the Broadway musical revue As Thousands Cheer in 1933, where she was the first black woman in an otherwise white show. She had three gigs at this point; in addition to the show, she starred in a national radio program and continued to work in nightclubs. She was the highest paid performer on Broadway, but she was starting to age. MGM hired Lena Horne as the ingenue in the all-Black musical Cabin in the Sky, and Waters starred as Petunia in 1942 reprising her stage role of 1940. The film, directed by Vincente Minnelli, was a success, but Waters, offended by the adulation accorded Horne and feeling her age, went into something of a decline.
She began to work with Fletcher Henderson again in the late 1940s. She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in 1949 for the film Pinky. In 1950, she won the New York Drama Critics Award for her performance opposite Julie Harris in the play The Member of the Wedding. Waters and Harris repeated their roles in the 1952 film version of Member of the Wedding.
In 1950, Waters starred in the television series Beulah but quit after complaining that the scripts were portraying African-Americans as "degrading." Despite these successes, her brilliant career was fading. She lost tens of thousands in jewelry and cash in a robbery, and the IRS hounded her. Her health suffered, and Waters worked only sporadically in following years.`In 1950-51 she wrote her biography "His Eye is on the Sparrow" with Charles Samuels. In it, she talks candidly about her life. She also explains why her age was confused, saying that her mama had to sign a paper saying she was 4 years older that she was. She states she was born in 1900.
Said her biographer Rosetta Reitz, Waters was a natural. Her "songs are enriching, nourishing. You will want to play them over and over again, idling in their warmth and swing. Though many of them are more than 50 years old, the music and the feeling are still there."
Private life:
Waters is the great-aunt of Dance music singer and songwriter Crystal Waters. In the period before her death at age 76 in Los Angeles, California, she toured with The Reverend Billy Graham, despite the fact that she was a Catholic and he was a Protestant. Waters died in 1977 at the age of 76 from heart disease. She had been staying in a Chatsworth, California, home of a young couple caring for her, and died at their home.
Filmography:
* On with the Show! (1929)
* Rufus Jones for President (1933)
* Bubbling Over (1934)
* Gift of Gab (1934)
* Tales of Manhattan (1942)
* Cairo (1942)
* Cabin in the Sky (1943)
* Stage Door Canteen (1943)
* Pinky (1949]])
* The Member of the Wedding (1952)
* Carib Gold (1957)
* The Heart Is a Rebel (1958)
* The Sound and the Fury (1959)
Awards and recognitions:
* 1949 Academy Award, Best Supporting Actress nomination
* 1984 Gospel Music Association Gospel Music Hall of Fame
* 1984 Gospel Music Hall of Fame
* 1998 Grammy Hall of Fame Award
* 2007 Inducted into the Christian Music Hall of Fame
~from Wikipedia
Stumble It!
We are
all gifted.
That is our
inheritance.
~Ethel Waters
FURTHER READING
His Eye Is On The Sparrow: An Autobiography (Quality Paperbacks Series)
Amazon Price: $15.25 (as of 10/12/2008)
List Price: $16.95
YouTube
I've never been able
to feel that there is
anything undignified
about making your living
by the sweat of your brow.
~Ethel Waters
ETHEL WATERS MUSIC
Am I Blue: 1921-1947
Amazon Price: $10.98 (as of 10/12/2008)
List Price: $10.98
Ethel Waters: 1923 - 1925
Amazon Price: (as of 10/12/2008)
List Price: $15.98
It has beenan ache and
a joy both to
look over this
big shoulder
of mine at all
my yesterdays.
~Ethel Waters
DVDs
All the
men in
my life
have been
two things:
an epic
and an
epidemic.
~Ethel Waters
eBAY
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GUESTBOOK
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QUOTES
Ethel Waters
"All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people."
~Ethel Waters
"All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic."
~Ethel Waters
"Asking what I considered an impossible salary when I didn't want to work for someone has boosted my pay again and again."
~Ethel Waters
"Basically there is no difference between whites and blacks, browns and yellows. I decided to think no more of people as Northerners and Southerners."
~Ethel Waters
"Elia Kazan understood my problems. He was able to bring out the very best in me. He gave me credit for my intelligence."
~Ethel Waters
"Hoofers and singers from all over Harlem wanted to work in our place so they could get their cut of our big kitty."
~Ethel Waters
"I am an isolationist."
~Ethel Waters
"I cannot help feeling I would have been happier with a husband and chidren of my own."
~Ethel Waters
"I had always loved John Ford's pictures. And I came to love him, too, but I was frightened to death working for him. He used the shock treatment while directing me."
~Ethel Waters
"I have no acting technique I act instinctively. That's why I can't play any role that isn't based on something in my life."
~Ethel Waters
"I have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty."
~Ethel Waters
"I never accepted the idea that I was all through. I guess no person who has once been a star can do that, ever."
~Ethel Waters
"I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider."
~Ethel Waters
"I never was a child."
~Ethel Waters
"I never was coddled, or liked, or understood by my family."
~Ethel Waters
"I want affection and tenderness desperately, but there's something in me that prevents me from handing it out."
~Ethel Waters
"I wanted to be with the kind of people I'd grown up with, but you can't go back to them and be one of them again, no matter how hard you try."
~Ethel Waters
"I've never been able to feel that there is anything undignified about making your living by the sweat of your brow."
~Ethel Waters
"In her whole life Mom never earned more than five or six dollars a week. Being without a husband, it was hard for her to find any place at all for us to live."
~Ethel Waters
"It has been an ache and a joy both to look over this big shoulder of mine at all my yesterdays."
~Ethel Waters
"Mom never quit on me. My only regret is that she didn't live long enough to share some of the money and comforts my work in show business has brought me."
~Ethel Waters
"Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me."
~Ethel Waters
"My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them."
~Ethel Waters
"Negroes are human beings with exactly the same faults and virtues as members of the other races."
~Ethel Waters
"New York is only 97 miles from Philadelphia but was the Big Time as no other American city has ever been."
~Ethel Waters
"No one in the world can beat Ella Fitzgerald as a riff singer."
~Ethel Waters
"Nothing can beat the smell of dew and flowers and the odor that comes out of the earth when the sun goes down."
~Ethel Waters
"Somehow, the things my mother wanted to do, the release in evangelism she sought with such frenzy, were transferred to me."
~Ethel Waters
"The big compliment came from the beer drinkers who didn't know me. They wouldn't drink or move when I sang. If they had their glasses in mid-air, the glasses wouldn't come down."
~Ethel Waters
"The first Negro woman singer to make a phonograph record was Mamie Smith. My first was made for the Cardinal Company."
~Ethel Waters
"The first time I sang after my throat operation was one of the tensest times of my life. But my voice proved to have a clearer tone than ever before."
~Ethel Waters
"The white audiences thought I was white, my features being what they are, and at every performance I'd have to take off my gloves to prove I was a spade."
~Ethel Waters
"There is a great supply of amateur undertakers in show business."
~Ethel Waters
"There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing."
~Ethel Waters
"There's no hypocrisy in Hell's Kitchen."
~Ethel Waters
"Though I was excited about the Sojourner Truth play, it was not reassuring to think that my entire future might depend on the success of that one show."
~Ethel Waters
Today or any day that phone may ring and bring good news.
~Ethel Waters
"We are all gifted. That is our inheritance."
~Ethel Waters
"We never had a bathtub. Mom would bathe me in the wooden or tin washtub in the kitchen, or in a big lard can."
~Ethel Waters
"We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available."
~Ethel Waters
"When you dominate other people's emotions, the time has to come when you will have to pay, and heavily, for that privilege."
~Ethel Waters
"Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk."
~Ethel Waters
"You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of a family. Just do your job right and your kids will love you."
~Ethel Waters
"I want affection and
tenderness desperately,
but there's something
in me that prevents me
from handing it out."
~Ethel Waters
STRING BEAN FEED
- Jazz: Waters
- Ethel Waters had a long and varied career and was one of the first true jazz singers ... The Europea...
- Ethel Waters | Old Time Radio
- Born October 31, 1896, in Chester, Pennsylvania, her eighty year life was a turbulent one filled wit...
- Internet Archive: Details: Ethel Waters-Am I Blue?
- Ethel Waters may have been the most popular African-American performer of the twenties and her caree...
- Ethel Waters (Scarecrow Press, Inc.)
- Ethel Waters overcame her disadvantaged childhood to become the most famous ... In Ethel Waters: Sto...
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EXTERNAL LINKS
- Ethel Waters - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 - September 1, 1977) was an African-American blues and jazz vocalist and actor. She frequently performed jazz, big band, ...
- Ethel Waters
- Ethel Waters biography. A history of Jazz before 1930. This site contains over 1000 songs from this era in Real Audio 3 format, as well as hundreds of ...
- Ethel Waters
- Ethel Waters Ethel Waters was the first black Superstar...an innovator who opened all the theatrical doors hitherto closed to black performers of her day, ...
- Ethel Waters
- Actress: Cabin in the Sky. The child of a teenage rape victim, Ethel Waters grew up in the slums... Visit IMDb for Photos, Filmography, Discussions, Bio, ...
- Harlem 1900-1940: Schomburg Exhibit Ethel Waters
- 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 ...
- YouTube - Ethel Waters - Eyes On The Sparrow
- Ethel Waters sings Eyes On The Sparrow. Song from the 1952 movie "The Member of the Wedding" With Ethel Waters as Bernice Sadie Brown; Julie Harris as Frank ...
- Ethel Waters - Profile of Singer and Actress Ethel Waters
- Ethel Waters is rarely mentioned when talented singers and actors are discussed. Despite her influence on other singers, and performances that received ...
- PBS - JAZZ A Film By Ken Burns: Selected Artist Biograph - Ethel ...
- Ethel Waters grew up in the Philadelphia area, where she came more strongly under the influence of white vaudeville singers such as Nora Bayes and Fanny ...
- Ethel Waters -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
- Britannica online encyclopedia article on Ethel Waters: American blues and jazz singer and dramatic actress whose singing, based in the blues tradition, ...
- glbtq >> arts >> Waters, Ethel
- Perhaps best remembered for her award-winning performances as an actress, Ethel Waters was also a renowned Blues singer, known to have sexual relationships ...
- Ethel Waters Quotes
- 42 quotes and quotations by Ethel Waters. ... Ethel Waters All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people. Ethel Waters ...
- Drop Me Off in Harlem
- Known as "Sweet Mama Stringbean" for her slender figure, Ethel Waters could sing the blues beyond compare. Her soft, refined voice, theatrical style, ...
- YouTube - Ethel Waters - Am I Blue (new copy)
- Ethel Waters was a brilliant jazz vocalist, who deserves to be better known to our present generation. This song from the film "On With The Show" was record ...
- Ethel Waters - Biography
- Ethel Waters on IMDb: Movies, TV, Celebs, and more...
- Ethel Waters' Jazz Masters
- BAND NAME discography. A history of Jazz before 1930. This site contains over 3000 songs from this era in Real Audio 3 format, as well as hundreds of ...
- Ethel Waters on MSN Music
- Biography: 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, ...
- biography of ethel waters
- Ethel Waters learned more from the streets than she did at home and grew to be tall and slender, while living in the poor communities in Chester and ...
- Ethel Waters
- Ethel Waters was the first black Superstar...an innovator who opened all the theatrical doors hitherto closed to black performers of her day.
- Remembering Ethel Waters
- Ethel Waters is rarely mentioned when talented singers and actors are discussed. Despite her influence on other singers and performances that received award ...
- Ethel Waters at All About Jazz
- Vocalist and actress Ethel Waters was a key figure in the development of African American culture between the two World Wars. ...
- MySpace.com - Ethel Waters - NEW YORK, New York - Jazz / Blues ...
- MySpace music profile for Ethel Waters with tour dates, songs, videos, pictures, blogs, band information, downloads and more.
- Ethel Waters
- Waters, Ethel (1896-1977): Pop singer and actress. She was the first black entertainer to move from vaudeville to "white" entertainment. ...
- Old Chester, PA: Famous Personalities
- A true Chester native, Ethel Waters was born in the city on October 31, 1896. ... A picture of Ethel Waters taken during her April 1972 visit to Chester for ...
- U B U W E B :: Ethel Waters
- Transcribed from vocals by Ethel Waters, recorded5/1922. From Ethel Waters 1921 - 1923, The Chronogical Classics, vol. 796. ...
- (What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue
- What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue Words by Andy Razaf and Music by Thomas "Fats" Waller and Harry Brooks Copyright ©1929 Santly Brothers, ...
- Jazz: Waters
- 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 ...
- Legendary blues singer comes to life in latest NAU Theater production
- Jan 18, 2006 ... The life of legendary blues singer Ethel Waters is the basis for the upcoming play Ethel, a one-woman show told through narrative and song ...
- Ethel Waters' grave (photo)
- A photo of the grave of actress Ethel Waters, at Forest Lawn in Glendale, California.
- This Day in History 1977: Ethel Waters dies
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- Internet Broadway Database: Ethel Waters Credits on Broadway
- Official Broadway credits for Ethel Waters, biographical information and other related facts.
- Ethel Waters | Old Time Radio
- Born October 31, 1896, in Chester, Pennsylvania, her eighty year life was a turbulent one filled with low valleys and high peaks.
- What A Character!
- Born in Chester, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a teenage rape victim, Ethel Waters spent her childhood on the street of Philadelphia where she boasted she ...
- View Time Network
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- African American Registry: Ethel Waters, the complete entertainer.
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- ETHEL WATERS: HIS EYE IS ON THE SPARROW
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- Ethel Waters (singer) - Biography Research Guide
- Ethel Waters - Ethel Waters was an Oscar-nominated American blues vocalist, who frequently performed jazz, big band, gospel,
- Google Directory - Arts > People > W > Waters, Ethel
- Red Hot Jazz: Ethel Waters - http://www.redhotjazz.com/waters.html ... Museum of Broadcast Communications: Waters, Ethel ...
- Ethel Waters News, Bio and Discography At Blackrefer.com
- View these sites that feature Ethel Waters: Ethel Waters - Red Hot Jazz · Ethel Waters - www.jazzateria.com · Ethel Waters - IMdB ...
- Ethel Waters Biography - Discography, Music, Lyrics, Album, CD ...
- Singer and actress Ethel Waters had an extremely difficult childhood. In fact, she opened her autobiography His Eye Is on the Sparrow with these words: "I ...
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- The religious affiliation (religion) of Ethel Waters, a great American actress.
- Ethel Waters Filmography
- Born: October 31, 1900 in Chester, PA; Occupation: Actor; Biography: Ethel Waters was raised by her grandmother in the dismal ghettoes of South Philadelphia ...
