Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters
Ethel Waterswas an American blues, jazz and gospel singer and actress...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJazz Singer
Date of Birth31 October 1896
CityChester, PA
CountryUnited States of America
mom tin-cans kitchen
We never had a bathtub. Mom would bathe me in the wooden or tin washtub in the kitchen, or in a big lard can.
mom drinking childhood
Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me.
mom husband hard-life
In her whole life Mom never earned more than five or six dollars a week. Being without a husband, it was hard for her to find any place at all for us to live.
mom regret business
Mom never quit on me. My only regret is that she didn't live long enough to share some of the money and comforts my work in show business has brought me.
mom children heart
What broke Mom's heart was realizing that her children knew nothing and cared nothing about the better side of life.
mean want nasty
If I wanted pity, I got it because I'm illegitimate. And when I didn't want it I was mean and nasty.
wall psychics rooms
I have always been psychic. The walls of any room I walk into talk to me.
mother father knives
My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.
mother evangelism release
Somehow, the things my mother wanted to do, the release in evangelism she sought with such frenzy, were transferred to me.
lonely fun bored
If whites bored me, it was because they bored themselves. They seemed to get little fun out of life and were desperately lonely.
I am an isolationist.
men saint enough
I never posed as a saint. I would have slept with a man for nothing if I liked him well enough.
white gloves spades
The white audiences thought I was white, my features being what they are, and at every performance I'd have to take off my gloves to prove I was a spade.
battle spunk cry
There had been lots of crises in my life. And there was plenty of spunk and battle cry still left in me.