STEPHEN BOURNE: ETHEL WATERS -- STORMY WEATHER
Scarecrow Press, 2007, 146 pages, paperback, $24.95.

Reviewed by William J. Schafer

This fannish short biography of the superb jazz-pop diva Ethel Waters (1896-1977) may interest some RAG readers, but it is basically a loose scrapbook-outline of her theater career, slighting her large role in transforming popular music in the 1920s and '30s. As author Bourne notes, "This is intended to be an appraisal of her career -- in particular her achievements as an actress -- with an overview of her life. I focused on her theatrical career more than her musical career because that is my primary area of interest."

Fair enough, but the absence of any real assessment of her music makes this story misleading, especially for readers who know little about her. The many details of her acting and musical theater work are fascinating but must be linked to her basic musical personality and her profound impact on African-American musical culture. The factual content is good and useful, but the writing is sub-par frequently, with distracting glitches that did not need to see print. Bourne has the annoying habit of referring to all persons by first name, which makes them seem close friends, not subjects of discourse. This leads to at least one confusing passage wherein he discusses the great Paris club-owner and entertainer, Ada "Bricktop" Smith, who is only referred to as Bricktop, without explanation or elaboration. Any reader lacking a voluminous memory for trivia will be mystified about who or what this "Bricktop" was.

Other problems are posed by Bourne's obsessive focus on homosexuality in Waters' life and times (he describes his own gay status, along with much other autobiographical detail, in the "Introduction"). He says she was a lesbian early in her career, living with dancer Ethel Williams. Then she married and remarried (three times, I think), always disastrously, to abusive or no-good men. He also notes that lesbianism was rampant among blues singers of the mid-'20s, according to some witnesses. In the end, it is difficult to tell if this is "real" gay life or just cultural faddism, and I don't find it useful information. Waters was also a devout -- or devout-seeming -- born-again Christian, who ended her life as an acolyte and performer with Billy Graham's show biz ministry. How did "gayness" square with that? Is it insightful to think about Waters in these terms? If not, the book contains way too much information about it.

One theme that dominates Bourne's narrative is how extraordinarily difficult, combative and intractable Waters was. She repeatedly undercut her own career by refusing to cooperate with directors, producers, fellow performers, etc., in major works, and she was relentlessly jealous, vindictive and threatening to anyone she perceived as competition. It is probably much more important to understand this rage and violence in Waters' character than to speculate on if and/or how she was "gay." Her rage is all part of the corrosive psycho-social burden on people of color during the era of total segregation, but it also defined her relationships with other black performers and colleagues. Much of it seems deliberately self-destructive, and her famous commitment to Jesus and Billy Graham does not readily jibe with this implacably nasty side of the great singer.

Bourne is very good on cataloguing Waters' appearances in musicals and plays, her work on film, television and radio. Missing is her presence as a masterly musician who was a major figure in defining the "Great American Songbook," who showed early on how to use jazz inflections and technique in pop singing and who dazzled theater audiences at a time when scarcely any black entertainers were allowed on stage or before cameras. She was a major TV sitcom star in Beulah, when that mode of comedy was just being invented (1950-52). She essayed stage roles of great emotional and psychological depth, as in Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding, at a time when producers only saw her only as a comic maid, a la Hattie McDaniels (who almost succeeded her in Beulah).

The problem with the book is that we only see the theater side of Waters' personality and career, when she came straight out of black music and learned all her skills as a top-billed solo singing star not as a trouper in a cooperative dramatic ensemble. She rose as a blues-pop diva and expected to be treated as such at a time when no black person (with the possible exception of the formidable Bessie Smith) could claim such a status. The frustration must have been unbearable, and Waters' rages are easy to comprehend, if we understand her musical stature as well as her secondary career before the footlights.

You have only to listen to some of Waters' superb recordings of music from shows to grasp her greatness -- "Heat Wave," "Taking a Chance on Love," "Memories of You," "You're Lucky to Me," even "Black and Blue," which was owned by Louis Armstrong but in Waters' rendition (it was written for a woman) is even more compelling. She was closely identified with "Stormy Weather" (it was written for her, even if appropriated by Lena Horne later), with "Shake that Thing," with "Blue River" and dozens of other hits that became standards for every singer in the 1920s and '30s. Her presence on records and in revues, vaudeville and major musical comedies spread her gospel of gentle swing, immaculate articulation and irrepressible happiness to millions of listeners.

Bourne throughout his narrative insists overmuch on crediting Waters as the foremost, the first, the best of everything in which she appeared, which places the book well on the far side of idolatry and strains belief. It would be better served with more about her amazing musicianship and her brilliant grasp of musical materials than about her sometimes reluctant or mediocre work on stage and in films. Bourne is quite right in feeling puzzled and affronted that Waters has never gotten her due as a great entertainer, but the key is in understanding why the complex snobberies, prejudices and shibboleths of pop and jazz music criticism (and the eternal mismanagement of the music business) allowed writers to ignore and downgrade her for the past half-century. This book offers little help in unraveling that dismal condundrum.

Available from www.scarecrowpress.com.

January 2008 issue | © 2008 The Mississippi Rag

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