Ethel Waters

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Ethel Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1896 and grew up in poverty with her grandmother, who worked as a domestic servant. She never lived in the same place for longer than fifteen months. At thirteen she married for the first time, but her husband was violent and she soon left him. She worked as a chambermaid in a hotel in Philadelphia for 4.75 dollars a week, until on her seventeenth birthday she went to a costume party in a nightclub and performed there.

Music and breakthrough

In the 1920s she began as a blues singer. She sang jazz, swing and pop on the stage of Broadway and in concert halls. Her well-known recordings include Dinah, Taking a Chance on Love, Heat Wave, Supper Time, Am I Blue? and Cabin in the Sky. Stormy Weather from 1933 is one of her greatest songs. She was also an actress, on stage and in film.

Influence

Waters sang with a clear, precise diction and could join blues and cabaret seamlessly. Her delivery, in which every word counts, shows how Black women singers in the 1920s and 1930s raised the popular song to a higher level. She died in 1977.

Listening

• 
  Stormy Weather · Ethel Waters, 1933

Discography

Studio albums

• 1949Shades of Blue
• 2004Am I Blue: 1921-1947

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Magazine: Het Cotton Club^NL Magazine

See also

• Harlem Renaissance