by Donald Bogle
Not long afterward, she was contacted by the Pace Phonograph Company for discussions about recording for its Black Swan label. A black-owned company, it was an outgrowth of the Pace & Handy Music Publishing Company, which had been the brainchild of the Black composer W. C. Handy—known as the “Father of the Blues” and whose “St. Louis Blues” Waters had been singing—and his partner, the young entrepreneur Harry Pace. In advertisements, Black Swan’s motto read: “The Only Genuine Colored Records—Others Are Only Passing for Colored.”
Pace had entered the recording business via a circuitous route. Born in 1884 in Covington, Georgia, the son of a blacksmith who had died while Harry was still a child, he was reared by his mother. Everything about young Harry seemed remarkable. At age twelve, he completed elementary school. Seven years later, he graduated—as class valedictorian—from Atlanta University, where he studied under his mentor W. E. B. Du Bois. For a time, Pace lived in Memphis where he and Du Bois ran a printing business. In 1905, the two published a short-lived but important publication, The Moon Illustrated Weekly, the first-known African American journal. Also in Memphis, Pace met Handy, who was impressed. He “was a handsome young53 man of striking personality and definite musical leanings. Pace had written some first-rate song lyrics and was in demand as a vocal soloist at church programs and Sunday night concerts,” said Handy. “It was natural, if not inevitable that he and I should gravitate together. We collaborated on songs.” Once they formed the Pace & Handy Music Publishing Company, Pace moved to New York City, married, and eventually settled in a brownstone—as well as into a very middle-class lifestyle—at 257 West 138th Street on Strivers Row, the most celebrated neighborhood uptown, known for its sedate but posh brownstones and its high-minded residents.
Working in the music business, Pace soon realized that, with rare exceptions like Bert Williams and then Mamie Smith in 1920, the white phonograph companies were still not recording African Americans. Pace was determined to change that. There was too much Negro talent around. Before the boom in Black blues singers took off, Pace borrowed $30,000, broke off his partnership with Handy, and organized the Pace Phonograph Company, which produced Black Swan Records. He opened up shop in the basement of his home. The label was named in tribute to Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, that nineteenth-century slave-born singer who rose to become a renowned soprano called the Black Swan. On the label itself, there was a drawing of a swan.
Many a famous African American would walk through Black Swan’s door. At one time, a slender young green-eyed beauty named Fredi Washington was its secretary and bookkeeper. That was until she heard about Shuffle Along, went down to see its casting people, and got herself in the chorus of the show. Later she came to national prominence when she played the light-skinned young Black woman who passes for white in the original film version of Imitation of Life. Her younger teenage sister, Isabel Washington, also worked at the company and even recorded two songs there. Then she was bitten by the showbiz bug and ended up on Broadway in such productions as Harlem and Bamboola. Later she gave up her career to become the first wife of Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
At one point, Black Swan’s business manager was Lester Walton, a shrewd, highly skilled and talented journalist who had left St. Louis in 1906 to come to New York to join the staff of the New York Age. Walton loved show business, the personalities, the perpetual razzle-dazzle, the nail-biting tensions—a show might open today and close tomorrow, a star might be born today and be a has-been tomorrow—and the steady stream of social activities. He ended up producing such early Black musicals as Oyster Man, Meet Mose, and Darkeydom. Later he became a columnist for the New York World (one of the first, if not the first, Black journalists at a major white newspaper), and from 1935 to 1946 he served as the U.S. ambassador to Liberia.
Black Swan’s recording manager was the very young Fletcher Henderson. Born in Cuthbert, Georgia, in 1898, his background was that of a well-brought-up member of the Southern Black bourgeoisie. His mother was a piano teacher who trained him to play classical music. One of his favorite pastimes was baseball, which he was so good at that he was nicknamed Smack: he was a kid who could smack the ball with his bat right outside the baseball diamond. Like Pace, Henderson had graduated from Atlanta University, where he majored in chemistry. Coming to New York for graduate studies, he needed money and took the Black Swan job. Also at Black Swan in the position of its music director was the future composer William Grant Still, who was a member of the Harlem Symphony. Among the members of the board were Du Bois and John Nail, the brother-in-law of James Weldon Johnson and the largest real estate broker in Harlem.
There would always be conflicting stories about how Ethel came to Black Swan’s attention. Fletcher Henderson recalled that he first spotted Ethel performing in a Harlem basement and afterward had her come to the studio to cut some sides. Harry Pace remembered it differently. “While in Atlantic City54,” he said, “I went to a cabaret on the West Side at the invitation of a mutual friend who stated that there was a girl there singing with a peculiar voice that he thought I might use. I went into the cabaret and heard this girl and I invited her over to my table to talk about coming to New York to make a recording. She very brusquely refused but at the same time I saw that she was interested and I told her that I would send her a ticket to New York and return on the next Wednesday. I did send such a ticket and she came to New York and made two records.” Waters herself always said that the talent scout who had first taken her to Cardinal took her to Black Swan. There is probably some truth in all three versions.
Regardless, Waters never forgot that day in 1921 when she first walked into Black Swan’s office, then still operating out of the basement of Pace’s home at 257 West 138th Street. There she saw that smart, young whipper-snapper of a college grad Fletcher Henderson, looking “very prissy and important55.” Like Pace, Henderson was light-skinned, which Waters would not have failed to notice. Nor would she have failed to observe the very proper decorum and manners of Pace, Henderson, and the rest of the staff at that time and in the very near future.
The men at the company dressed in suits and ties, except, of course, when in the studio. The suits would be perfectly pressed; the shirts, a blinding white, freshly laundered, starched, and ironed. Shoes were polished and probably spit-shined. The young women, like Fredi and Isabel Washington, who were not at the company during Waters’ initial days, nonetheless were well groomed, well mannered, well spoken, and for the time, well educated. In the case of the Washington sisters, it also didn’t hurt, as far as the company was concerned, that they were light-skinned with straight hair. For Ethel, everything about Black Swan must have reeked of upright middle-class Negro respectability. Though she might not admit it, she was both impressed and perhaps intimidated by the educational backgrounds of its employees. Here was a staff that personified the highfalutin dictys whom she never felt at home with and often was suspicious of. After all, for all its promise and for all of Pace’s aspirations of doing something for the race, this was the company that would turn down a recording deal with Bessie Smith, who was deemed too loud and raucous, too ethnic, basically too cullid for the taste of this very proper company. Their idea was to do music that in essence was culturally relevant and would uplift the race rather than hinder it. The men who ran the company had doubts about some of the popular music that a new generation was listening to. Yet they were in show business, and they understood that the “less cultured” music could not be ignored. Their early recordings—of a fine baritone balladeer, C. Carroll Drake, of vaudevillian Katie Crippen, and of soprano Revella Hughes—may have appealed to the highbrow Negro middle class, but their sales went nowhere. Ethel Waters could change all of that.
Despite any reservations about the dictys, Ethel respected Harry Pace, whom she referred to as “Mr. Pace.” Too ambitious to turn down any offer the company made, for her it was better to work with the dictys than the ofays. In turn, the men at Black Swan saw possibilities in this young woman who wa
s becoming so well known. No “coon shouter,” no gut-bucket blues-er. “There was much discussion56 of whether I should sing popular or ‘cultural’ numbers,” said Waters. “They finally decided on popular.”
“Fletcher was in charge57 of the record dates,” musician Garvin Bushell recalled. “He might pick the numbers in the office, present them to the vocalists, then we’d have rehearsal and get it together. Often there were only two pieces of music, one for the piano and one for the trumpet (or violin). Sometimes everybody had a part.” Recording itself was then a complicated procedure, often a matter of logistics, that could unnerve a performer. Alberta Hunter, who also recorded at Black Swan, remembered the company’s “little bitty studio58.” At her first recording session, Ethel was instructed to stand and sing into a big horn that was connected to a small square window. Behind Waters were the musicians who were to accompany her, Cordy Williams’ Jazz Masters—a sextet with Williams on clarinet, Fletcher Henderson on piano, Ralph Escudero on tuba, Chink Johnson on trombone, Edgar Campbell on clarinet, and an unknown trumpet player. In an adjacent room, the record was actually made: there, as Hunter observed, “a needle cut into a thick brown wax on the revolving matrix, spinning off a curlicue shaving that a technician brushed off onto the floor.” Aside from the awkwardness of recording itself, Ethel had to adjust to performing without an audience to give her feedback. Most performers felt isolated at first, unsure how they were coming across, puzzled by the way their voices were actually recorded. If she was apprehensive, she didn’t show it. Nor did she sound it. That wasn’t her style. Relatively quickly, she mastered the art of making records, modulating her sound, knowing when to come on strong and when to turn her voice soft or lower, for this new medium.
Her first recordings—recorded in May 1921—were “Down Home Blues” and the sexy “Oh, Daddy.” The former was a standard female blues lament. Well, almost. “My friend has quit me / He’s gone for sure / He broke my heart / For I loved him true” were among the opening lines of “Down Home Blues,” in which Ethel was cool and collected. But she was full-blast on the chorus: “Woke up this morning / the day was dawning / And I was feeling all sad and blue / I had nobody to tell my trouble to / I felt so worried / I didn’t know what to do.” What was surprising was the forceful delivery of what in another singer’s hands might be soft and sentimental. Instead she seemed to announce that, yeah, she might be blue but not that blue. It would take more than a man to bring her down. The song ended with the comment that there was no use grieving “because I’m leaving / I’m broken-hearted and Dixie-bound / Lord, I been mistreated, ain’t got time to lose / My train is leaving / And I got the down-home blues.” Here “Down Home Blues” touched on a theme that turned up in many other songs of the period, the effects of the Great Migration and the idea that city life might lead to heartache, that perhaps some aspects of life were better in the South: the down-home place of family, warmth, comfort. Nonetheless, with “Down Home Blues,” Ethel had a sensational debut.
Upon releasing the record, Black Swan saw astounding results. Some estimates were that “Down Home Blues” sold some 100,000 copies, but Pace said, “I sold 500,000 copies59 of these records within six months.” Whether or not Pace’s numbers were inflated, Waters had a hit. “The next month,” said Pace, “I had her make two other records.” At that next session, which was actually in August 1921, she recorded “There’ll Be Some Changes Made” and its reverse side, “One Man Nan.” Backing her were Garvin Bushell on clarinet; Charlie Jackson on violin; Fletcher Henderson on piano; and an unknown player on trumpet and trombone. Thereafter, said Pace, “for a long time she made a record a month.” There followed such songs as “That Da Da Strain” and “Georgia Blues,” as well as “Brown Baby” and the reverse side “Ain’t Goin’ Marry,” and “Memphis Man” and its reverse side “Midnight Blues.” Advertisements were taken out with pictures of her and by the next year Black Swan was billing her as “Queen of the Blues.”
Pace never believed her other recordings “measured up to the ‘Down Home Blues’ record,” but that did not matter because she got Black Swan out of debt. At the end of Black Swan’s first month, cash receipts had been a paltry $674.64. By the end of the year following the release of Waters’ records, the company’s average monthly receipts were $20,000. For the first year, income from record sales was $104,628.74. “I then began to invite other well-known singers and performers,” recalled Pace, “and within a year I was issuing about twelve records a month and selling them in every state in the United States, and in a good many foreign countries.” Almost single-handedly, Ethel Waters put Black Swan on the map.
Her Black Swan recordings also put her on the map, marking the first upward swing of her career. Never again would she be thought of simply as Sweet Mama Stringbean; never again would she be just another blues singer. The recordings broadened her audience, set her on the road to becoming famous, and put money in her pockets. From her past club bookings, she had saved most of her earnings as well as sent money home to her family. But now, flush with the big bucks, she became giddy with excitement. She bought gifts for friends. She was also, even now, a soft touch for fellow entertainers down on their luck. But Ethel Waters was also good to Ethel Waters. She just about emptied out her savings account to plunk down $1,200 for a mink coat. Afterward, she only had $15 left in the account, but she never had any regrets.
Pace soon devised a plan to pull in even heftier profits—and also make Ethel and the label even better known. He would set up a tour for her, to be accompanied by Fletcher Henderson and the Black Swan Jazz Masters. A few other performers would also be hired to create a vaudeville style program. The entire company would be called the Black Swan Troubadours and would appear on bills with other vaudeville acts at individual theaters.
On October 12, Waters agreed to the tour that would begin in November 1921 and eventually ended in July 1922, carrying her to twenty-one different states and fifty-three cities. Among those to travel with her was a talented group of musicians: Joe Smith and Gus Aiken on trumpets; Gus’s brother Buddy Aiken and Lorenzo Brashear on trombone; Raymond Green on drums; and Garvin Bushell on clarinet. By now, she understood better the type of sound her music needed. Waters liked strong piano accompaniments. In the years to come, she would hire two remarkable pianists—Pearl Wright and Reginald Beane—to travel with her, and on some recordings, Waters’ only accompaniment would be a skilled player on the piano. Later she would also hire pianists Herman Chitterson and Marion Roberts. Among her favorite piano players were Willie “The Lion” Smith, Charlie Johnson, and especially James P. Johnson, who later accompanied her on the recording “You Can’t Do What My Last Man Did” in 1923. “Men like him, Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith, and Charlie Johnson could make you sing until your tonsils fell out,” she said. “They stirred you into joy and wild ecstasy. They could make you cry. And you’d do anything and work until you dropped for such musicians.” But none could touch James P. Johnson. “All the licks you hear, now as then, originated with musicians like James P. Johnson. And I mean all of the hot licks that ever came out of Fats Waller and the rest of the hot piano boys.”
But that was not the case with Fletcher Henderson. During rehearsals, she let Henderson know—in very direct language, to put it mildly—that he had to alter his style. She even bought piano rolls of James P. Johnson in hopes that he’d understand what was best for her music. Henderson would later lead his own jazz band, one of the best and most influential, at New York’s Club Alabam, the Cotton Club, and the Roseland Ballroom, and he would work with such major talents as Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Don Redman, Rex Smith, Benny Carter, and his pianist brother Horace Henderson. He would be credited with ushering in the big band movement that included the groups of Chick Webb, Jimmie Lunceford, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington. But at this time, the “prissy” Henderson, whose family had looked down on work songs and other popular music, still had to learn how to play popular music. He had to be loosene
d up, or so Ethel believed. “Ethel had been in60 cabarets all her life. She didn’t sing real blues, though,” said Garvin Bushell. “She syncopated. Her style was influenced by the horns she heard and by church singing.” It was a style that Ethel believed Henderson hadn’t yet mastered. She nagged, argued, hounded, and berated him. Every other word out of her mouth could be a “shit” or a “damn” or a “goddam”—and when she did so, this was the restrained Ethel—to get him to give her what she called “ ‘the damn-it-to-hell bass,’61 and that chump-chump stuff that real jazz needs.” She said she would “practically have to insult Fletcher Henderson to get him to play my accompaniments the way I want.”
For Henderson, it had to have been an exasperating experience to be bossed around by this ghetto girl who had no education, no class (when it came to working with people), and who cussed like a sailor. He also had to deal with the fact that she couldn’t read music. “Very few singers could62 read in those days,” said Garvin Bushell. “Fletcher never wrote out anything for Ethel.” Instead he relied on her remarkable ability to pick up the melody. “Ethel had a great memory for lyrics, though, and a great ear, like Ella Fitzgerald,” recalled Bushell. Despite whatever insults she hurled his way, Henderson, like so many others in Ethel’s early years and in the years to come, must have realized she knew what she was talking about. And working with her, as trying and upsetting as it often was, must have also excited him. He would always be respectful of her great talent. That to him was undeniable.
Henderson wrestled with the prospect of touring with her, but for reasons other than her temperament. His real concern was that it might look improper to travel with a young woman. He became so worried that he sent for his family—his mother, his father, his sister Irma, too—to come from Georgia to New York to meet Ethel. He wanted their approval. Or maybe he felt he had to have it. It’s not hard to imagine what Waters thought about that. By now, Ethel was shrewdly aware of her audience, onstage and off. In a studio or rehearsal room, she might be rowdy and profane, but offstage, she had begun to carry herself in a somewhat queenly fashion, especially when decked out in her new mink coat. Her height—all five feet nine and a half inches—and carriage would always serve her well, and her budding high-diva style signaled to all observers that she could not be trifled with and would have to be taken seriously. Like royalty, she also knew when to be tough and mean as well as when to turn on the charm. Meeting Fletcher Henderson’s family, she must have been on her best behavior because the Hendersons liked this “sweet” girl from the other side of the tracks. Fletcher won the family approval he had sought.
