by Donald Bogle
Once the Standard engagement ended, surprisingly, Ethel took a job clearing dishes at the Horn and Hardart Automat—for 75 cents a day and one hot meal as well. Perhaps not anxious to return to life on the road, perhaps enjoying some semblance of a home life on Fawn Street, she didn’t seem to have thoughts of a career uppermost in her mind. Only after the drummer Toots Moore told her she had to start singing again did she take an engagement—in the beginning as a fill-in—at Barney Gordon’s saloon on the corner of Kater and Thirteenth streets. At first, she earned $2 a night. Later she pulled in $20 a week. Again Sweet Mama Stringbean was singing the blues like no one else. Because her leg still bothered her, she couldn’t dance much for the patrons, but she shimmied like crazy. Of course, the shimmy, with its fierce shaking of the shoulders and hips, was a powerfully sexy dance. But part of her appeal at Barney Gordon’s also must have been her personality. That broad smile was her sign of survival, of being able to enjoy life and invite an audience along for her joyride. By now, too, she was becoming a striking woman, tall, with a deep brown complexion and vibrant eyes.
Ethel soon had boyfriends in pursuit. Twice her age, the gambler West Indian Johnny was protective and big-brotherly and apparently a proficient lover. A seemingly platonic relationship developed with the former lightweight boxing champ Louis Brown. Then there was a serious relationship with a young man she referred to as Rocky, who possessed the characteristics that Ethel came to prefer in the men in her life. Well built, he was a smooth talker, a good dresser, and always in charge of any given situation. Now and in the future, she was drawn to men with physical strength and power; men she couldn’t walk over though she would test them; men with a potent sexuality. Also exciting was Rocky’s sense of danger. He was a drug addict, as Ethel said, “a three-letter man.” “He took C, H36, and M. In dopehead language, C means Cocaine, H Heroin, and M Morphine.” On dope, he was a charmer. Off dope, he was mean and aggressive. As she told the story, she learned to inject him with heroin. Whenever he was thrown in jail, she came to his rescue and bailed him out. Theirs was never a stable relationship, rarely a minute of peace and quiet. He cheated on her. He beat and abused her. She broke up with him. She went back to him. One day she flushed a stash of dope down the toilet, and he went after her. He also asked her to marry him, but wisely she never accepted. With Rocky, she walked to the edge but pulled back before falling over. All that turmoil that she had grown up with—the fights, the arguments, the recriminations, the substance abuse, the emotional flux and lack of stability—appeared replicated in her affair with Rocky. Finally, the relationship came to an end when Rocky was drafted into the army. Ethel was free of him.
When there was a drop in business at Barney Gordon’s, which she attributed to the war, her nightly appearances were cut back. Nervous, she took part-time work at Horn and Hardart’s again. Finally, the war came to an end; the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.
In 1919, a break came when she was booked to appear at Leroy’s Cabaret in New York. That offered her a glimpse into the big time, what life could be like for her if she could take her career to the next level—indeed, if she started to seriously think of having a career. Afterward she joined the cast of a musical called Hello, 1919! that opened at New York’s Lafa-yette Theatre. It was a revue with skits, songs, and dances, typical vaudeville fare, all loosely tied together thematically with the idea that a new year had come and was in need of celebration. In the show, she performed a number in blackface dressed in typical plantation-style gingham, making her look like a young mammy in waiting. The irony, of course, was that underneath this old-style makeup and imagery was a young woman who would soon usher in a whole new contemporary style for young African American women.
Shortly Afterward, she apparently returned to Philadelphia and to the Horn and Hardart Automat. Then an actor-producer friend whom she had met on the road contacted her with an offer for a show he was doing at the Lincoln Theatre in New York. It was only a week’s worth of work, but perhaps now she wanted out of Philadelphia, at least for a spell, to make a little money. Though she still was not fully conscious of it, she loved performing. She accepted the offer, but she also asked a friend to hold onto her job at the automat until she got back.
Now, though, she was saying her real good-bye to Philadelphia. Her ties to the city and her family would always be there, but she would never really be able to go home again. She was on the brink of something new in her life. Her period of apprenticeship had ended. The big time might still be a ways off. But it was on the horizon.
Part Two
Chapter 3
The Big Apple
ETHEL WATERS ARRIVED IN NEW YORK—that delicious Big Apple, that city of grand dreams and high hopes—full of optimism and burning with ambition. Better than anyone else, she understood what she had going for herself. She knew she could put a song across. Not lost on her was her own sexy appeal. She had also begun to make something of a name for herself on the road in all those rickety theaters and then in Philadelphia. Unlike countless other newcomers to the city, she was not looking for work. She came armed with a booking at the Lincoln Theatre in Harlem.
Yet Waters was also a clear-eyed realist, aware of obstacles and uphill battles. Indeed she seemed to thrive on them. Tall, shapely, and sexy as she was, she was also brown-skinned and proud of it. On the road, her deep brown complexion hadn’t mattered to those audiences of farmhands, day laborers, cooks, maids, even the teachers. But things might be different here. She realized that there would be a preference for light-skinned beauties in the chorus lines in the nightclubs and the Black musicals that would soon become so popular in the Apple. She also still felt hampered by her background. New York, more than anyplace else, had its dictys, those upper-class, educated Negroes who might look down on her as a rough, untutored girl from the wrong side of the tracks.
Yet overriding all of that was something else. Waters, then twenty-four years old, though she would say she was four years younger, had a hard-edged, fierce kind of drive, which, along with her talent, would be the key to her survival. Maybe she wasn’t sure if a career in showbiz was for her, but maybe such a career might work out after all. Onstage, she could be hot but also exude a sexy cool and a sense of control. Offstage, rarely was she a relaxed woman. Her mind was always racing, always sizing up a person or a situation. Except when onstage, her emotions were never settled, her mood never calm. Those who soon worked with her would usually describe her as high-strung or quick-tempered or just impossible. Though Ethel Waters always thought of herself as an outsider, a loner, who somehow managed to maneuver her way around the odds to attain success, in truth, she would never waste time maneuvering. Instead she was always fighting to beat the odds head-on.
And so work began at the Lincoln. In business since 1909, the Lincoln on West 135th was Harlem’s first theater and eventually boasted of a 1,000-seat auditorium, a $10,000 Wurlitzer organ, and, for a time, its own stock company. Between the live performances at the Lincoln, silent films were shown. Ethel had already performed at the Lincoln’s rival, the Lafayette Theatre, which had opened in 1912, with a 1,200-seat auditorium. It too had its own stock company—a prestigious one at that—and took pride in its serious dramatic presentations, which sometimes were melodramatic but crowd-pleasing versions of downtown successes that had “a great appeal to37 Harlem audiences,” said James Weldon Johnson. “To most of the people that crowded the Lafayette and the Lincoln the thrill received from these pieces was an entirely new experience; and it was all the closer and more moving because it was expressed in terms of their own race.” Both the Lincoln and the Lafayette also provided audiences with wildly innovative vaudeville shows and jazz programs, with musical and comedic entertainment that could be raucous and racy, steamy and sexy, with singers, dancers, and comics who knew how to put on one heck of a show.
Waters sailed through her engagement at the Lincoln Theatre. It couldn’t have been much different from what she did in Philadelphia. The
audiences loved her, and she was held over for a second week. More than anything else that holdover indicated that she had a chance to make it in New York. She had become friendly with the dancer Alice Ramsey, who suggested that Ethel stay in the city. All the action was here, and so were the contacts and opportunities for advancement.
In this period following World War I, New York City was coming alive, humming, swaying, and then jumping to the beat of its sexy nightclubs, its packed theaters, and its one-of-a-kind entertainers, all of which were altering long-held attitudes and perceptions about women, about race, about entertainment itself. After the horrors of the Great War, residents in the big cities, be it Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, or primarily New York, grew eager and restless to break free of past restrictions, past inhibitions, past hang-ups. Often underlying the new heightened energy was a basic apprehension that no one knew what to expect tomorrow, so it was best simply to enjoy today and seek excitement and satisfaction whenever, wherever possible. The enforcement of Prohibition, the Eighteenth Amendment in 1920, which prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States, added to an atmosphere of fun, frivolity, and open rebellion, the idea of not living by anyone else’s trumped-up rules. Whether they were denizens of the Jazz Age or the Lost Generation, many in and out of the big cities just ignored Prohibition and drank bootleg liquor or bathtub gin whenever the authorities were not hovering over their shoulders. Nightclubs, speakeasies, after-hours joints, and private clubs became places where a new generation sought not only the booze and the furiously fast new dances like the Charleston and the black bottom, or the sexually charged atmosphere, but also the delirious pleasure of indulging in the latest fad or trend. Soon the flapper, with her bobbed hair and flat chest, and the would-be playboy were fixtures on the social scene. So, too, were the sporting men—the gamblers, the hustlers, the guys always on the make with their big wallets, their slicked-back hair, and their smooth-talking ways around the ladies—who frequented the colored clubs.
The Roaring Twenties were about to begin. Al Jolson, Helen Morgan, Sophie Tucker, Fannie Brice (sometimes spelled Fanny), and later Rudy Vallee were some of the music stars of the era. Of such singers, Ethel liked Jolson, who she felt could put over a song, work it to death without ever killing it, and almost always keep his smile intact as he did it. At this stage in the game, his use of blackface didn’t seem to bother her. It was just part of an accepted leftover from minstrelsy. Greatest among the Black stars was Bert Williams who, following the death of his partner George Walker, eventually crossed the color barrier and became the sole Black star in the white Ziegfeld Follies. There was also Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. Born in 1878 in Richmond, Virginia, the grandson of a former slave, Robinson, orphaned at an early age and reared by his grandmother, had run away from home, had teamed with a partner in an act called Butler and Robinson, and then went solo. Credited with having created the staircase dance and having coined the word “copacetic” (meaning everything’s just fine), Robinson would continue his upward swing when he appeared in such Broadway shows as Blackbirds of 1928, Brown Buddies, and Hot Mikado and then in Hollywood films with Shirley Temple. Offstage, he was known as a gambler and a mean-spirited brawler, an all-around tough customer.
Waters was fascinated by the heady atmosphere of New York, its skyscrapers, its theaters, its fashions, its busy, crowded streets, its fast cars and fast people, its luxurious style of living, and its vibrant Negro community. Downtown, however, left her cold. Unlike the South, there were no signs that read FOR WHITES or FOR COLORED, but color barriers existed nonetheless, just as they had in Philadelphia. She did not care to go into a restaurant or department store where she would be made to feel she had no business being. Her attitude was to let the ofays have downtown Manhattan. Give her uptown anytime. Harlem was the best place to be.
Yet Harlem wasn’t yet Harlem, at least not the Harlem to come of legend and lore. Harlem, Waters could see as she settled into the city, was still growing. Originally settled by the Dutch, who called it “Nieuw Haarlem,” Harlem had later become home to German immigrants as well as the Irish and Jews. African Americans hadn’t started to move into Harlem in significant numbers until 1905. That exact year could easily be pinpointed. What with a national depression at the time as well as an overflow of residences in Harlem, a building at 31 West 135th Street had found itself with far too many vacancies. Then following a shocking murder on the premises, the building became practically empty. Its desperate owner turned to a Black realtor, Philip A. Payton, who sent the word out to well-to-do Negroes that deluxe apartments were available. In a short time, he filled the building. Afterward African Americans moved into other residences uptown. During the war, even more African Americans flooded into New York to work in local munitions plants or simply to have a chance for a better life. But there was, as might be expected, resistance from the whites then living in the community. At one point, the Harlem Property Owners Protective Association considered constructing a twenty-four-foot-high fence at 136th Street to keep out the Negro invaders.
“Harlem was anything but an exclusively Negro section,” Ethel said of the time she took up residence there. “One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street was still a white boulevard and we weren’t welcome there. Colored people could buy seats only in the peanut gallery in B. F. Keith’s Alhambra Theatre, and none at all in the other white showhouses.”
As Waters hit town, the great shifts in Harlem were just about to occur. Between 1920 and 1930, its Black population would rise to more than 200,000. In 1920, there still was not any central club that just about everyone, Black and white, knew about. But in 1923, that would change with the arrival of the Cotton Club, which would be famous for its great Negro entertainers as well as its restrictions against Black patrons. Other fabulous clubs would sprout up. A nightspot like the Shuffle Inn at 2221 Seventh Avenue, which opened its doors in 1921, was later renamed Connie’s Inn and became the place to go for blockbuster revues like Keep Shufflin’ and Hot Chocolates with hit songs by Fats Waller and Andy Razaf. In 1925, Small’s Paradise would open at 2294½ Seventh Avenue. It too catered mainly to whites. Yet such Black artists of the era as Countee Cullen and that noted Negrophile Carl Van Vechten came to see the elaborate floor shows and eventually to hear the music of Fletcher Henderson and James P. Johnson. Still more establishments opened: the Savoy Ballroom, “the home of happy feet”; and the Nest Club, a snazzy jazz joint that opened by 1925 and was but one of the clubs that lined the blocks of 133rd Street between Lenox and Seventh avenues and was known as Jungle Alley.
Like the rest of the country, Ethel would also witness an unprecedented outpouring of creativity within the Black communities in the large urban centers, primarily but not exclusively in New York. In this age of the Harlem Renaissance a dazzling lineup of novelists, poets, playwrights, and artists dramatically altered American culture with a steady flow of innovative and provocative work that challenged mainstream America’s traditional view not only of the African American community but of itself as well. In the world of literature, such artists as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Nella Larsen, and Jean Toomer came to prominence. An artist like Aaron Douglas, whose illustrations appeared in books and publications as diverse as the NAACP’s Crisis and Condé Nast’s Vanity Fair, became Black America’s “premier visual artist” during this era. Playwrights like Hughes and Wallace Thurman, along with composers like Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake and crackerjack pop writers like Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, would inject a new style, a new vitality, a new rhythm, and a new point of view into American theater, redefining what a Broadway show, be it a drama or a musical, could and could not do. Towering dramatic performers like Charles Gilpin, Rose McClendon, and Paul Robeson would give startling and powerful performances in such productions as The Emperor Jones, In Abraham’s Bosom, Porgy, All God’s Chillun Got Wings, and Black Boy. And onstage and off, the much talked about Washington sisters, Fredi a
nd Isabel, would turn heads with their new-style high-toned glamour. At the same time, among the more sophisticated city dwellers, the old dividing lines between the races were being torn down, especially at the nighttime in the right-time places.
“This was the era38 in which was achieved the Harlem of story and song,” said James Weldon Johnson, “the era in which Harlem’s fame for exotic flavor and colorful sensuousness was spread to all parts of the world; when Harlem was made known as the scene of laughter, singing, dancing, and primitive passions, and as the center of the new Negro literature and art; the era in which it gained its place in the list of famous sections of great cities.” Johnson added: “But there is the other real and overshadowing Harlem. That commonplace, work-a-day Harlem. The Harlem of doubly handicapped Black masses engaged in the grim, daily struggle for existence in the midst of this whirlpool of white civilization.”
To Ethel, it was clear that something extraordinary was in the air, something that would dramatically transform the place and position of the Negro in America. Deciding to stay, she moved into an apartment with her friend Alice Ramsey and another entertainer, Lola Lee. Now she had to find work. Ramsey was performing at a club called Edmond’s and advised Ethel to see the club’s proprietor, Edmond “Mule” Johnson.
Located at 132nd Street and Fifth Avenue, Edmond’s Cellar was tiny, congested, a tad claustrophobic with a low ceiling; it seated between 150 and 200 customers, all clustered at tables in front of a small stage. Upper Fifth Avenue was hardly a fashionable area for Black nightclubs. Ethel soon learned of the club’s reputation: for entertainers it did not mark a chance for the start of a career; rather it was considered a dead end. “After you worked there39,” she said, “there was no place to go except into domestic service.” With little on his mind other than finding performers who made his customers happy, kept his tables full, and, in short, guaranteed that the money rolled in, owner Edmond was gruff and known for calling women “bitches” or slapping them on the backside. He was also white, which meant that for Waters he was automatically suspect. Waters never forgot the day she auditioned. “All I’ve seen her do so far is shake her behind,” Edmond told Ramsey. Yet he decided to try her out. Ethel shrugged off his comments, but she didn’t forget them. She would never forget any slight, be it professional, social, or personal. Edmond also insisted that her money had to go into the kitty, the big pot into which everyone’s tips were dropped and later divided among the performers and the musicians.
