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Ethel Waters
Age: 80 (passed away Sep. 1st, 1977)
Height:
Birth Place: Chester, Pennsylvania, USA
Born: Dec. 31st, 1969
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Ethel Waters' Main TV Roles
NOTE: Complete List of Works can be found at
IMDB
BIOGRAPHY: The child of a teenage rape victim, Ethel Waters grew up in the slums of Philadelphia and neighboring cities, seldom living anywhere for more than a few weeks at a time. "No one raised me, " she recollected, "I just ran wild." She excelled not only at looking after herself, but also at singing and dancing; she began performing at church functions, and as a teenager was locally renowned for her "hip shimmy shake". In 1917 she made her debut on the black vaudeville circuit; billed as "Sweet Mama Stringbean" for her tall, lithe build, she broke through with her rendition of "St. Louis Blues", which Waters performed in a softer and subtler style than her rivals, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. Beginning with her appearances in Harlem nightclubs in the late 1920s, then on the lucrative "white time" vaudeville circuit, she became one of America's most celebrated and highest-paid entertainers. At the Cotton Club, she introduced "Stormy Weather", composed for her by Harold Arlen: she wrote of her performance, "I was singing the story of my misery and confusion, the story of the wrongs and outrages done to me by people I had loved and trusted". Impressed by this performance, Irving Berlin (I) wrote "Supper Time", a song about a lyncing, for Waters to perform in a Broadway revue. She later became the first African-American star of a national radio show. In middle age, first on Broadway and then in the movies, she successfully recast herself as a dramatic actress. Devoutly religious but famously difficult to get along with, Waters found few roles worthy of her talents in her later years.
TRIVIA:
- Sang with the 'Billy Graham (I)' (qv) Crusade in her later years, always to a warm reception, and recorded several albums of sacred music for Word Records. Became a born-again Christian at one of Graham's crusades in the late 1950s.
- Her favorite hymn was "His Eye Is on the Sparrow." She used it for the title of her autobiography.
- She got religion in the late 1950s and performed and toured with evangelist 'Billy Graham (I)' (qv) until her death in 1977.
- Never learned how to read music.
- Singer 'Crystal Waters (I)' (qv) is her great-niece.
- Waters has had three of her recordings inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame: "Dinah" (Columbia Records, 1925) in 1998; "Stormy Weather" (Brunswick Records, 1933) in 2003; and "Am I Blue?" (Columbia Records, 1929) in 2007. Her "Stormy Weather" recording was also inducted into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2004.
- She recorded her first two songs, "The New York Glide" and "At the New Jump Steady Ball," in 1921 on the Cardinal Record label. That same year, she was the first artist to record for Black Swan, 'W.C. Handy' (qv)'s record label. By the early 1930s, she had introduced fifty song hits.
- Often appeared on the various radio & TV shows of New York City media couple "Tex & Jinx" (John Reagan 'Tex' McCrary & Eugenia 'Jinx' Lincoln Falkenberg). Waters appeared as a regular on the Tex & Jinx TV Show over WNBT in NYC starting January 29, 1954.
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