This superstar of the mid-twentieth century gained her fame by singing a song which became an American classic, at a ritzy Harlem club.
by Rich Watson
Ethel Waters had a spectacular career as a singer and an actress. As the latter, she was the first black star on TV and the second to get an Oscar nomination.
As the former, she was known for singing one of the greatest songs in American history. She did it at a place famous for its array of black entertainers during the Harlem Renaissance era—the Cotton Club.
“Stormy Weather” through the years
Arguably the best-known version of “Stormy Weather” is by Lena Horne, a notable singer and actress in her own right. She first recorded it in 1941 and sung it two years later in an all-black film of the same name. Stormy Weather was also the name of a later album by her. (Plus, in 1943, she’d make a movie with Waters, the all-black Cabin in the Sky.)
Among those who have recorded the song include a who’s who of the greatest American musicians: Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Etta James, Judy Garland, and in 2017, Bob Dylan.
Waters’ version is in the Grammy Hall of Fame and the National Recording Registry. It appears at number thirty on the AFI “100 Years… 100 Songs” list.
The first record of the song was by the Leo Reisman Orchestra in 1933, sung by the song’s co-writer, Harold Arlen.
When Waters sung it, she made it hers because of the life she had lived.
About Ethel Waters
The Pennsylvania native was born the product of a rape, committed against her teenaged mother Louise Anderson. Ethel was raised by her grandmother. The first of Ethel’s three marriages was at thirteen. It only lasted three years. According to her 1951 autobiography His Eye Is On the Sparrow, she “never was a child. I never was cuddled, liked, or understood by my family.”
She first sung professionally at seventeen, in Baltimore, and roamed from Chicago to Atlanta and eventually to Harlem in 1919. Black women singers such as Bessie Smith had grown in popularity around this time. In the twenties Waters recorded with Cardinal Records, Black Swan (later bought by Paramount) and Columbia. She toured.
Also during the twenties she allegedly lived with a dancer named Ethel Williams. Waters is believed to have been bisexual, though she never made a public statement on the matter.
In 1929 she appeared in her first movie, On With the Show! She married for the second time that year. It ended four years later. By 1933, Waters performed on Broadway in Irving Berlin’s As Thousands Cheer, as well as on radio and in nightclubs.
This was the year she recorded “Stormy Weather.”
“Stormy Weather” and Waters
“Weather” was written by Arlen and Ted Koehler. At first it was for Cab Calloway (who also appeared in Weather the film). He had starred at the Cotton Club in place of Duke Ellington, during his time in Hollywood. When Ellington returned to the Club, they needed someone who could sing, so they brought in Waters.
In a biography of Arlen, Waters describes the first time she performed the song at the Club:
When I got out there in the middle of the Cotton Club floor, I was telling things I couldn’t frame in words. I was singing the story of my misery and confusion, of the misunderstandings in my life I couldn’t straighten out, the story of wrongs and outrages done to me by people I had loved and trusted.
This verse is typical of the song’s mood:
When he went awayThe blues walked in and met meIf he stays awayOld rocking chair will get meAll I do is prayThe Lord above will let meWalk in the sun once more
She did twelve encores the night she first sung it. She performed with Ellington’s orchestra, but recorded the song with the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra a month after the show. Berlin cast her in Thousands after seeing her perform.
Weather the movie was inspired by the life of another Harlem Renaissance great, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who stars in the film, his last. Katherine Dunham and her dance troupe also perform, and there is a dance sequence by the Nicholas Brothers that has to be seen to be believed.
Her singing career, though, exploded with her gig at the Cotton Club.
About the Cotton Club
Located on the corner of Lenox Avenue and 142 Street from 1923-36 (plus a brief period in midtown Manhattan), it was owned by a mobster while he was in prison. It sold liquor illegally during the Prohibition era. Its clientele was exclusively white and wealthy.
But it featured many black entertainment superstars, including Horne, Dunham, the Nicholas Brothers, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, and more.
On a stage that resembled a southern plantation, Ellington and his orchestra was the house band starting in 1927. Live radio broadcasts helped make him a national star. The club also had elaborate floorshows. Songs were written for the Club. Arlen and Koehler were the house songwriters beginning in 1930.
Criticism of its whites-only policy from notables such as Langston Hughes led to the Club finally opening its doors to blacks in 1935. A race riot that same year led to its temporary closure. A year later, it reopened in midtown, but additional causes led to its permanent closure in 1940.
A new version opened on West 125 Street in 1978 and remains there today, open to everyone.
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