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 of 13, but soon left her abusive husband and became a maid in a Philadelphia hotel working for $4.75 per week. On her 17th birthday, she attended a costume party at a nightclub on Juniper Street. She was persuaded to sing two songs, and impressed the audience so much that she was offered professional work at the Lincoln Theatre in Baltimore, MD. She later recalled that she earned the rich sum of ten dollars a week, but her managers cheated her out of the tips her admirers threw on the stage.
After her start in Baltimore, Waters toured on the black vaudeville circuit. As she described it later, "I used to work from nine until unconscious." Despite her early success, she fell on hard times and joined a carnival, traveling in freight cars along the carnival circuit and eventually reaching Chicago. Waters enjoyed her time with the carnival and recalled, "the roustabouts and the concessionaires were the kind of people I'd grown up with, rough, tough, full of larceny towards strangers, but sentimental and loyal to their friends and co-workers." She did not last long with them, though, and soon headed south to Atlanta, where she worked in the same club with Bessie Smith. Smith demanded that Waters not compete in singing blues opposite her. Waters conceded and sang ballads and popular songs. Around 1919, Waters moved to Harlem and there became a celebrity performer in the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s.
Waters obtained her first Harlem job at Edmond's Cellar, a club that had a black patronage. She specialized in popular ballads and became an actress in a blackface comedy called Hello 1919. Jazz historian Rosetta Reitz points out that by the time Waters returned to Harlem in 1921, women blues singers were among the most powerful entertainers in the country. In 1921, Waters became the fifth black woman to make a record, on the tiny Cardinal Records label. She later joined Black Swan Records, where Fletcher Henderson was her accompanist. Waters later commented that Henderson tended to perform in a more classical style than she would prefer, often lacking "the damn-it-to-hell bass."
She recorded with Black Swan from 1921 through 1923. In early 1924, Paramount bought the Black Swan label, and she stayed with Paramount through that year. Waters first recorded for Columbia Records in 1925, achieving a hit with her voicing of "Dinah", which was voted a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998. Soon after, she started working with Pearl Wright, and together they toured in the South. In 1924, Waters played at the Plantation Club on Broadway. She also toured with the Black Swan Dance Masters. With Earl Dancer, she joined what was called the "white time" Keith Vaudeville Circuit, a traditional white-audience based vaudeville circuit combined with screenings of silent movies. They received rave reviews in Chicago and earned the unheard of salary of US$1,250 in 1928. In 1929, Waters and Pearl Wright arranged the unreleased Harry Akst song "Am I Blue?," which then appeared in the movie On with the Show and became a hit and her signature tune.
Although she was considered a blues singer during the pre-1925 period, Waters belonged to the vaudeville style of Mamie Smith, Viola McCoy, and Lucille Hegamin. While with Columbia, she introduced many popular standards including "Dinah," "Heebie Jeebies," "Sweet Georgia Brown," "Someday, Sweetheart," "Am I Blue?" and "(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue" on the popular series, while she continued to sing blues (like "West End Blues," "Organ Grinder Blues," etc.) on Columbia's 14000 race series. During the 1920s, Waters performed and was recorded with the ensembles of Will Marion Cook and Lovie Austin. As her career continued, she evolved toward being a blues and Broadway singer, performing with artists such as Duke Ellington. She remained with Columbia through 1931. She then signed with Brunswick in 1932 and remained until 1933 when she went back to Columbia. She signed with Decca in late 1934 for only two sessions, as well as a single session in early 1938. She recorded for the specialty label "Liberty Music Shops" in 1935 and again in 1940. Between 1938 and 1939, she recorded for Bluebird.
In 1933, Waters made a satirical all-black film entitled Rufus Jones for President, which featured then-child performer Sammy Davis Jr. as Rufus Jones. She went on to star at the Cotton Club, where, according to her autobiography, she "sang 'Stormy Weather' from the depths of the private hell in which I was being crushed and suffocated." She had a featured role in the wildly successful Irving Berlin Broadway musical revue As Thousands Cheer in 1933, where she was the first black woman in an otherwise white show. She had three gigs at this point; in addition to the show, she starred in a national radio program and continued to work in nightclubs. She was the highest paid performer on Broadway at that time. MGM hired Lena Horne as the ingenue in the all-Black musical Cabin in the Sky, and Waters starred as Petunia in 1942, reprising her stage role of 1940. The film, directed by Vincente Minnelli, was a success.
She began to work with Fletcher Henderson again in the late 1940s. She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in 1949 for the film Pinky, under the direction of Elia Kazan, after original director, John Ford, quit, due to his disagreements with Waters. According to producer Daryl Zanuck, Ford "hated that old...woman (Waters)." Ford, Karzan stated, "Didn't know how to reach Ethel Waters." Kazan later referred to Water's "Truly odd combination of old-time religiosity and free-flowing hatred.". In 1950, she won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for her performance opposite Julie Harris in the play The Member of the Wedding. Waters and Harris repeated their roles in the 1952 film version of Member of the Wedding'' In 1950, Waters starred in the television series Beulah, but quit after complaining that the scripts' portrayal of blacks was "degrading." She later guest starred in 1957 and 1959 on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford. In the 1957 episode, she sang "Cabin in the Sky."
Despite these successes, her brilliant career was fading. She lost tens of thousands in jewelry and cash in a robbery, and had difficulties with the IRS. Her health suffered, and she worked only sporadically in following years. In 1950-51 she wrote the autobiography His Eye is on the Sparrow with Charles Samuels, in which she wrote candidly about her life. She explains why her age has often been misstated: her mother had had to sign a paper claiming Waters was four years older than she was, and that she was born in 1896. His Eye is on the Sparrow was adapted for a stage production in which she was portrayed by Ernestine Jackson. In her second autobiography, To Me, It's Wonderful, Waters states that she was born in 1900. Rosetta Reitz called Waters "a natural ... Her songs are enriching, nourishing. You will want to play them over and over again, idling in their warmth and swing. Though many of them are more than 50 years old, the music and the feeling are still there."
Waters is the great-aunt of singer-songwriter Crystal Waters. Waters often toured with Billy Graham on his crusades. She died on September 1, 1977, aged 80, from uterine cancer, kidney failure, and other ailments in Chatsworth, California.
Recordings of Ethel Waters were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."
My Handy Man
Ethel Waters Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Positively, absolutely sure was blind;
I found the best that ever was,
Here's just some of the things he does:
He shakes my ashes, greases my griddle,
Churns my butter, strokes my fiddle;
My man is such a handy man!
He threads my needle, creams my wheat,
My man is such a handy man!
Don't care if you believe or not,
He sure is good to have around;
Why, when my furnace gets too hot,
He's right there to turn my damper down!
For everything he's got a scheme;
You ought to see his new starter that he uses on my machine;
My man is such a handy man!
He flaps my flapjacks, cleans off the table, He feeds the horses in my stable; My man is such a handy man!
He's God's gift!
Sometimes he's up long before dawn,
Busy trimming the rough edges off my lawn;
Oooh, you can't get away from it! He's such a handy man!
Never has a single thing to say,
While he's working hard;
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
The song "My Handy Man" by Ethel Waters is a playful and humor-filled tribute to the singer's significant other, who is portrayed as a jack-of-all-trades and an indispensable presence in her life. The opening lines celebrate the man's virtues, declaring that anyone who thinks good men are hard to find must be blind. The lyrics go on to list a variety of tasks that the man performs for the singer, from shaking her ashes to feeding her horses, and describe him as a "handy man" who always has a solution for any problem that arises.
The song's playful tone and exaggerated descriptions of the man's abilities make it clear that "My Handy Man" is not meant to be taken entirely seriously. Instead, it showcases the singer's affection for her partner and her appreciation for the many things he does for her. The line, "He's God's gift!" reinforces the idea that the man is seen as a blessing in the singer's life, and the final lines of the song suggest that she cannot imagine getting by without him. Overall, "My Handy Man" is a charming and quirky love song that celebrates the joys of a happy relationship.
Line by Line Meaning
Whoever said a good man was hard to find,
The person who claimed that finding a good man is challenging,
Positively, absolutely sure was blind;
was completely unaware of the truth.
I found the best that ever was,
I discovered the most excellent man there ever was.
Here's just some of the things he does:
Allow me to list some of his abilities, and it's only some!
He shakes my ashes, greases my griddle,
He disposes of my ashes and lubricates my cooking equipment.
Churns my butter, strokes my fiddle;
He prepares my butter and tunes my fiddle.
My man is such a handy man!
He is, without a doubt, very skilled and helpful!
He threads my needle, creams my wheat,
He helps me sew and prepares my wheat for cooking.
Heats my heater, chops my meat;
He turns on my heater and cuts my meat.
My man is such a handy man!
He is, without a doubt, very skilled and helpful!
Don't care if you believe or not,
I don't mind if you believe me or not,
He sure is good to have around;
but he is indeed essential to have around.
Why, when my furnace gets too hot,
For example, when my furnace overheats,
He's right there to turn my damper down!
He's always there to turn down the damper.
For everything he's got a scheme;
He always has a solution for everything.
You ought to see his new starter that he uses on my machine;
He came up with an innovative starter for my machine, and you need to see it!
My man is such a handy man!
He is, without a doubt, very skilled and helpful!
He flaps my flapjacks, cleans off the table,
He flips my flapjacks and cleans the table.
He feeds the horses in my stable;
He also feeds the horses in my stable.
My man is such a handy man!
He is, without a doubt, very skilled and helpful!
He's God's gift!
He is a tremendous blessing from God!
Sometimes he's up long before dawn,
Sometimes he wakes up before dawn,
Busy trimming the rough edges off my lawn;
and busily trimming the edges of my lawn.
Oooh, you can't get away from it! He's such a handy man!
He's just so useful that you can't deny it!
Never has a single thing to say,
He never complains or expresses negative emotions,
While he's working hard;
while he's putting in hard work.
I wish that you could see the way
I really wish you could witness
He handles my front yard!
the way he manages my front yard!
My ice don't get a chance to melt away,
He makes sure my ice doesn't melt,
He sees that I get that old fresh piece every day;
and ensures that I get fresh ice every day.
Lord, that man sure is such a handy man
Indeed, that man is a great treasure!
Lyrics © BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC
Written by: ANDY RAZAF
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@SuperLaiah
God may rest her soul. She was and still is one of the greatest voices that ever lived
@clarequilty4962
I hadn't heard Ethel Waters sing good old dirty blues before. Her style and phrasing kind of cleans it up, though. I bet when she did it live she did it differently.
@RamardoTHunt
Back in the days of the 20s Ethel use to do the shimmy, she was known as Sweet Mama Stringbean
@platypusboy
downright filthy
@trelaine
Written by Alberta Hunter. She was the same age as Ethel Waters. There is a recording of Alberta singing this when she was in her 80s really cute. Some say it's filty. I think it's cute. Nothing to say this wasn't her husband and there is nothing wrong with that. By the way, the 20s was a bit of a wild era, just like the 20s are now.
@Pentagonshark666
very filthy, but a classic. Ethel sang a true blues back then in later years she sang gospel and was a true evangelist.
@stridedude
With not one filthy word.