Ethel Waters

about

Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977) was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, although she began her career in the 1920s singing blues. Her best-known recordings include "Dinah," "Stormy Weather," "Taking a Chance on Love," "Heat Wave," "Supper Time," "Am I Blue?" and "Cabin in the Sky," as well as her version of the spiritual "His Eye Is on the Sparrow." Waters was the second African American, after Hattie McDaniel, to be nominated for an Academy Award. She is also the first African American woman to be nominated for an Emmy Award, in 1962. Ethel Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, on October 31, 1896, as a result of the rape of her teenaged mother, Louise Anderson (believed to have been thirteen years old at the time, although some sources indicate she may have been slightly older), by John Waters, a pianist and family acquaintance from a mixed-race middle-class background. Waters played no role in raising Ethel. Ethel Waters was raised in poverty and 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 cuddled, or liked, or understood by my family." Waters grew tall, standing 5'9½" in her teens. According to women-in-jazz historian and archivist Rosetta Reitz, Waters' birth in the North and her peripatetic life exposed her to many cultures. Waters married at the age

top songs

albums

The Incomparable Ethel Waters

The Favourite Songs Of Ethel Waters

Presenting Ethel Waters

The Essential George Gershwin

Her Best Recordings 1921-1940

Am I Blue? (Original Recodings from Her Movies 1928 - 1929)

Stormy Weather

100 Super Best

Ethel Waters 1929 -1939

Down In My Soul

Diva

Some of These Days (Original Recordings 1929 -1930)

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