by Donald Bogle
In a very short time, Ethel was the talk of downtown folks as not only a great singer but also a consummate entertainer. Tan Town Topics afforded her the opportunity to showcase her versatility. Here was a woman who could handle comedy skits and dialogue and also dance. “She is a natural113 comedienne and not one of the kind that has to work hard,” Carl Van Vechten would later say. “She is not known as a dancer, but she is able, by a single movement of her body to outline for her public the suggestion of an entire dance. In her singing she exercises the same subtle skill.” “It was in this114 show that Ethel Waters developed into the greatest comedienne of her day on Broadway’s after-theatre spots,” said a jubilant Dancer. At the Plantation Club, the uptown girl from Edmond’s announced that downtown Manhattan had a new goddess to reckon with. The engagement confirmed that she had made it on the white time, in New York, no less
Nightly, patrons rushed to the club to see her. Among the crowd was a young woman named Caroline Dudley Reagan, who was then searching for talent for an all-Negro show she planned to launch in Paris. Originally, Reagan had wanted Florence Mills for what became the groundbreaking production La Revue Nègre, but Mills was too high-priced for Reagan’s budget. Will Marion Cook had then suggested Waters. Dazzled by Ethel, Reagan quickly made an offer. But Ethel was hesitant about making the trip abroad. Dancer may have had reservations. There was now too much going on for her in New York. Why break the momentum? Besides, Dancer had dreams of getting Ethel to Broadway as the star of a show and himself as a producer. As was her custom when she really did not want to commit to a show, Ethel demanded an outrageous salary: $500 a week, or even $750, according to some versions of the story. Though Reagan tried negotiating, Waters wouldn’t lower her price.
During the Plantation Club engagement, she was plagued by a voice problem now familiar to her: a persistent dry and itchy throat. “Ethel arrived at the115 theater one night with a pondful of frogs in her throat,” recalled Josephine Baker. “She managed to get through the evening like a true professional, but the next morning she sent word that she had lost her voice completely.” Ethel’s physician ordered her to take two weeks off. Of course, this was just what Josephine had been waiting for. “I knew all Ethel Waters’ songs by heart,” said Baker, who rushed to tell the director. He decided to let her go on. Baker went out and kicked up a storm. She also was a giddy comedienne who could cross her eyes and make funny faces. The audience loved her.
“When I returned to116 the dressing room after the show, the girls were buzzing with excitement. ‘You were sensational. Did you hear that clapping for “Dinah”?’ ‘Dinah’s’ success didn’t much impress me. I could have been a canary for all it mattered. The song was so popular, it practically sang itself. What did please me was having added a few songs that appealed to me.”
By the time she left the club that morning, Baker was set to take over the floor show at the club. But there was something she hadn’t counted on: Ethel. “The next evening I117 found violets in the dressing room and Ethel on the stage. I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
“Your success cured her118 fast,” a friend told Baker.
“It’s not fair,” Josephine told the director. “You promised—”
“I didn’t promise anything.”
“You told me after the show that they liked me better than Ethel because I made them laugh.”
“Not better. The same. Anyway, she’s lighter and prettier.”
That was how Baker recalled it. But, of course, Ethel was not that much lighter than Baker, if at all. But in Baker’s eyes, the color caste system of so many Black shows was still firmly enforced. Ironically, Ethel—in other situations—may have felt exactly the same way.
Still, said Josephine: “It was back to the chorus again. When I ran into Ethel in the wings, she gave me a furious look. That was the last straw. ‘Back so soon. Too bad for the show,’ I snapped. Ethel was so startled by my rudeness that she muttered something like, ‘Stupid darky.’ I’m sure she would have pulled my hair if it hadn’t been so short. I was ashamed of myself.”
But not that ashamed.
Josephine Baker loved telling this story over and over, year after year. But it is doubtful that she actually sang Waters’ songs. More likely, she won audiences over with her dancing, which was indeed spectacular and beyond compare. Though she developed into a fine chanteuse in Europe, she was never the singer that Ethel was.
Still, Josephine Baker’s timing, on and off the dance floor, proved perfect. In the audience that night was Caroline Dudley Reagan, who still wanted Ethel Waters for her show, despite the stall in the negotiations. Reagan—impressed by Baker—signed Baker to a contract that paid her $250 a week. Months later—on October 25, 1925—Josephine Baker opened in Paris in La Revue Nègre—and attained the kind of international stardom that must have surprised everyone, including Ethel. “I preferred to see119 America first,” Waters said. “Josephine ended up with a chateau, an Italian count and all Paris at her feet permanently. . . . Sacré bleu!” Ethel, however, was not one to wallow in regrets. Five days before Baker’s opening—on October 20, 1925—Ethel recorded “Dinah,” which record buyers Black and white snapped up. Its astounding success marked it as the first big hit to come out of a nightclub. “Dinah” also marked Waters’ ascension to a new level of stardom—and made her more famous. Let Josephine have Europe, even bigger things had to be on the horizon for Waters in New York. Still, she never forgot that Baker had triumphed in a show that had been offered to her first.
In May 1925, Dancer had skillfully negotiated two major deals. First was a three-year contract with the Keith-Albee circuit for her appearances in the East and Midwest. He proved pretty good at his game because the contract was reported to have “the highest figures ever120 paid to a colored woman, and compares favorably with the salary offered to any of the big acts.” But that was not the end of his maneuvers to get Ethel into the big time. Also negotiated was a contract with the Columbia Phonograph Company. Dancer and Ethel met with Frank Walker, Columbia’s recording manager, who had had inaugurated the company’s race record releases—with Bessie Smith as its first Black artist in the series in 1923. Though the company also recorded Eddie Cantor, Ted Lewis, and even Bert Williams (who died in 1923), Bessie Smith’s records helped reverse the company’s fortunes. Before Bessie’s arrival, Columbia, faced with mounting financial troubles, had applied for receivership in February 1922. The next year, two receivers were assigned by the court for the American Columbia Company. Her “Down-Hearted Blues” sold 780,000 copies in less than six months, and Columbia regained some of its momentum. For the next eight years, Walker supervised all of Bessie’s recordings and was said to be the only white man that Bessie trusted, though a royalty clause in Bessie’s contract had been removed by Walker. Pursuing other artists who might keep the company’s accounts in the black, Walker could not have failed to notice Ethel’s sales with Black Swan and her growing appeal with a broader audience. She could be a winner for Columbia.
The Columbia contract marked another turning point. The press release that was sent out stated that Ethel’s “numbers will not be ‘Blues.’ She is to specialize in snappy, jazzy, and comedy numbers of her own selection.” But in the end, the record label realized she could not completely abandon the blues material that had made her so popular. With the Columbia deal, though, Dancer and Ethel may have seen the writing on the wall. By the end of the decade, blues music would no longer be as popular. Already the broader audience was in search of a new kind of popular music, of which the success of “Dinah” was clearly a sign. Ethel was already ahead of the curve. Columbia agreed to pay her $250 for each record to be released; $125 a side. She also was guaranteed royalties.
Ethel’s early recordings for the company—from 1925 to mid-1928—included not only “Dinah” but such other classic numbers as “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “Brother You’ve Got Me Wrong,” “Go Back Where You Stayed Last Night,” “You Can’t Do What My Last Man Did,” �
��Sugar,” “Guess Who’s in Town,” “Do What You Did Last Night,” “My Handy Man,” “ ‘Maybe Not at All,” and “Take Your Black Bottom Outside.”
At Columbia, she worked with such musicians as Joe Smith (on trumpet), Buster Bailey (bass clarinet), Joe King (trombone), Florence Mills’s husband U. S. “Slow Kid” Thompson (who did vocals on “You Can’t Do What My Last Man Did”), as well as such pianists as Maceo Pinkard, her ideal pianist James P. Johnson, J. C. Johnson, Clarence Williams, Lorraine Faulkner (on “Heebie Jeebies”), and the man and the woman who knew her so well, Fletcher Henderson and Pearl Wright. She also performed the songs of such composers as Ben Bernie, Maceo Pinkard, and Kenneth Casey (“Sweet Georgia Brown”), J. C. Johnson (“You Can’t Do What My Last Man Did”), Roy Turk (with Maceo Pinkard on “Sweet Man”), Jack Palmer and Clarence Williams (“I’ve Found a New Baby”), Boyd Atkins (“Heebee Jeebies”), Andy Razaf and J. C. Johnson (“My Special Friend Is Back in Town,” “Lonesome Swallow,” and “Guess Who’s in Town”). With all these talents, Waters was making expertly produced recordings in which her clarity and her gift for double entendres were on scintillating, brilliant display. Hers was a modern sound, unlike the music of the minstrel shows or old-school vaudeville. As she began to move further away from blues and jazz, she was mastering urban pop.
The melodies of the Columbia recordings were strong and direct, the lyrics precise and clearly understood. There were none of those delirious interludes—as heard in the material of classic blues numbers—when a listener might not be sure what was being said but knew something was implied. Nor was there an overflow of those delicious idiosyncratic moans or soulful groans of the classic blues singer. Yet Ethel could never resist a good growl at an unexpected moment in a song. The growl was sexy and again very modern, used to punctuate the underlying feeling of a lyric or the flow of the melody. In the future, she would use the growl even when she became a Broadway star. Ethel’s double entendres were fairly straightforward and beautifully playful. Listeners delighted in knowing what exactly was on her mind.
With many of the songs, record buyers responded not only to her voice and style but also to her sexy, assured tough-girl persona. On “Go Back Where You Stayed Last Night,” she was setting down the law to a fellow who hadn’t come home the night before. No weeping willow was she, crying her heart out at being jilted. Instead she was telling him basically to forget her. Similar sentiments were expressed in “You Can’t Do What My Last Man Did,” in which she informed the guy that he had better learn to live up to her expectations. In “Take Your Black Bottom Outside,” she was giving the guy the boot.
On “My Handy Man,” Waters performed the Andy Razaf lyrics with a womanly assurance and sexiness that even later generations would be surprised by. As Waters rhythmically talked her way through, making the double meanings all the more apparent, there wasn’t much singing at all. “My Handy Man” opened with pianist James P. Johnson, setting the stage for the proceedings to come, quickly preparing listeners for that moment when vocalist (or monologuist) Waters entered front and center, skillfully turning Andy Razaf’s playful, bawdy lyrics into a one-woman conversation. Speaking to herself and anyone else who might listen and in just the right tone with just the right attitude, she presented a tale of a woman’s sensual delights; elaborating on the pleasures her man had brought her—and about the importance of a man who was proficient at his job. “Whoever said a good man was hard to find / Positively, absolutely sure was blind,” she began, savoring each and every word. “He shakes my ashes, greases my griddle / Churns my butter, strokes my fiddle . . . / He threads my needle, creams my wheat / Heats my heater, chops my meat . . . / Sometimes he’s up long before dawn / Busy trimming the rough edges off my lawn . . . / I wish that you could see the way / He handles my front yard / My ice don’t get a chance to melt away / He sees that I get that old fresh piece every day / Lord, that man sure is such a handy man.” As Razaf wanted, Waters made record buyers actually listen to the lyrics. Record buyers would hang on every word she uttered, waiting to hear what came next. No wonder “My Handy Man” proved to be one of her big hits, one of her signature songs that music lovers and record collectors would long cherish.
With “Shake That Thing,” which also soared on the charts, she proved herself supremely skilled at understated control—as well as at masterful storytelling. Some were amused by it; others were shocked. Everyone considered it, at the very least, risqué. Here she told the story of a new dance craze. The song opened with Pearl Wright on piano, lively and steady, laying the groundwork for the arrival of Waters. In a tempo different from Pearl’s, Ethel began in a slow, sensuous tone. “Down in Georgia / Got a dance that’s new,” she sang. “Ain’t nothing to it / It’s easy to do / Called Shake That Thing.” Then she slowed the proceedings down even more as she crooned, “Ah, shake that thing.” As part of her story, she announced: “Now the old folks are doing it / The young ones too / But the old folks learn the young ones / what to do / About shaking that thing / Ah, shake that thing.” Of course, the thing she sang about could be interpreted in various ways. On the one hand, it was to shake one’s derriere. On the other, she may have been telling folks to shake something entirely different. She continued her story with the lyrics: “Now Grandpa Jackson / grabbed Sister Kate / He shook her / like you shake / jelly on a plate / How he shook that thing / Ah, he shook that thing.” But there was more to come. “Why, there’s old Uncle Jack / The jelly roll king / He’s got a hump in his back / From shaking that thing / Yet he still shakes that thing / For an old man, how he can shake that thing.” Not only was hers a tale of a sensual cultural phenomenon—this new lowdown dance—but also an invitation to her listeners, male and female, to join her in a sexy pas de deux. For later generations, “Shake That Thing” was not anywhere as naughty as “My Handy Man.” But embarrassed as Ethel may have been by the latter song, she appeared more embarrassed by “Shake That Thing” because it was such a huge hit that everyone remembered for a long time.
Some Black critics of the time commented on the “dirtiness” of some of her material. Yet they also were quick to point out how “clean” she kept everything. It wasn’t an easy balancing act. Somehow she never let herself become coarse or vulgar. Perhaps it was that clarity and her delight in playing with words and suggestive metaphors, stretching or amplifying the meaning or sometimes signaling that the true meaning might lie in the ear of the listener. Perhaps it was that control she always maintained. Perhaps it was her attitude in song.
Always calling the shots, she might seem hot and ready for some sexy action but never was she overcome by the throes of passion. Basically, as in a song like “Go Back Where You Stayed Last Night,” she gave commands, she didn’t take them. Here she was part of a tradition that could be heard when Bessie Smith sang such bawdy numbers as “Do Your Duty,” “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl,” and “I’m Wild About That Thing,” all songs in which she expressed her desires in what—for a woman at that time—was considered to be a sexually aggressive style. Bessie, who was said to feel uncomfortable with such songs, nonetheless communicated the idea that it was her right, as much as a man’s, to enjoy and even ask for sex. That same attitude came across in Waters’ music. But a crucial difference between Waters and Bessie, as well as Ma Rainey, was that she never seemed to want sex that badly. Never would she grovel in the mud for a man, begging for his love or for sex. Neither Bessie nor Ma did that either, but they seemed to have stronger sexual impulses. Away from her recordings, Waters had a very powerful sex drive. But in her music, it was another matter altogether. Moreover, in her music, Ethel let it be known that no man would ever tell her what to do. With a hot-cool style that she now took mainstream, Ethel stood above the needs of the man and her own needs as well. Emotionally, Bessie and Ma, those shouters as Waters referred to them, went deeper into the gut of a song. Waters never let herself go that far emotionally.
From this point into the 1930s—during her Broadway years—she
was mastering a style that was to influence many of the great pop and jazz stars of the twentieth century: everyone from her contemporaries Adelaide Hall and Elisabeth Welch to Ellington’s favorite singer Ivie Anderson were stamped by Waters. Jazz singer Mildred Bailey, who would be popular in the next decade, collected her records. In the 1940s and 1950s, Pearl Bailey—with her asides and double entendres—in a song like “Takes Two to Tango”—had obviously picked up a thing or two from Waters. Ethel’s bell-like clarity would be heard in Ella Fitzgerald. That precise diction would be a hallmark of Lena Horne’s style. That dramatic ability to tell a story in the clearest manner and that mellowness—on “Dinah” and “Sweet Georgia Brown”—would echo at times in Dinah Washington. Jazz musicians like Bix Beiderbecke and obviously Fletcher Henderson would also be admirers. Beiderbecke “went to hear her at every121 opportunity,” recalled jazz critic Leonard Feather. Bing Crosby, Mel Tormé, Frank Sinatra, Bobby Short, and Barbra Streisand were all fans. Even Billie Holiday, though she would never admit it, was influenced by Waters.