Ethel Waters Research Paper

Ethel Waters was an american singer and actress born on October 31, 1896 due to her mother being raped at the age of 13. She died on September 1, 1977 due of a kidney failure. She frequently played Jazz, Pop, and Big Band music on the Broadway stage and in concerts. Although she began her career in the 1920s Singing The Blues she didn’t blow up until years later.
Waters grew up in poverty and married at the age of 12, while she was still attending school. At 13 she became a chambermaid in a Philadelphia hotel,she sang in public for the first time in a local nightclub. At 17, billing herself as “Sweet Mama Stringbean,” Waters was singing professionally in Baltimore, Maryland. It was there that she became the first woman to sing the W.C. Handy classic “St. Louis Blues” on the …show more content…
In 1930 she was Back on the Broadway stage in Blackbirds, a remake of the popular 1924 musical, and the next year she played in Rhapsody in Black. In 1933 She acted with Marilyn Miller in Irving Berlin’s musical As Thousands Cheer, her first show without an all black cast. Her rendition of “Heat Wave” in that show linked the song to her. While being considered one of the greatest blues singers, Waters also performed and recorded with such jazz greats as Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington . Several songwriters wrote songs especially for her, and she was identified with “Stormy Weather.” and “Dinah” Ethel’s first straight drama role was in the 1939 production of DuBose and Dorothy Heyward’s Mamba’s Daughters. About a year later she spent a season on Broadway in the musical Cabin in the Sky, and she was also on the 1943 film version. Probably her most successful dramatic role was in the stage version of Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding in 1950, a performance for which she won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. She also played in the movie version in