Search - Ethel Waters :: Ethel Waters 1929 to 1931

Dazzling display of confidence, swing, and ebullience

Reviewer123 | 06/11/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Every one of the Classics Discs of Ethel Waters, covering her recordings from 1921-1947, is worth owning for different reasons. If I had to pick a favorite, though, this one might be it. Although it has none of her best known hits, it has some of the finest singing she ever did, and in this reviewer's opinion, that ranks as some of the finest singing ever put on record. Waters diction, dramatic skill and unerring sense of timing are all well in evidence here, but what comes across particularly strongly in this record is her sheer ebullience and confidence. Nothing seems out of her power or range, and on this disc she does it all, from rather treacly ballads like "Three Little Words" and "Memories of You", which she transforms into something touching, to swing numbers like "I Got Rhythm" and "Second Handed Man", from humor in "I Like The Way He Does It" and "Better Keep an Eye on Your Man" to real heartbreak in "When Your Lover Has Gone", and everything in between. No one else (except possibly Ella Fitzgerald) expressed the sense of joy Waters brings to songs like "You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me" or "Do I Know What I'm Doing", and no other singer has ever had the combination of rhythm, melodic sense, improvisation and sly humor that make songs like "Second Handed Man" and "I Like the Way He Does It" still delightful, and far more than just double entendre leftovers. Confidence? In "Long, Lean and Lanky Mama", this black woman sings, in the late 1920's, "Blondes, brunettes and redheads, too, Of each I've had, quite a few, And now I want the world to know, I'm looking for a brand new beau...." (!) One can argue about the degree of parody in "Memories of You" or that "Without that Man" is a little too weepy, but with those possible exceptions, the disc is a treasure from start to finish. Of particular note in a disc full of gems are "Second Handed Man", "I Like The Way He Does It", "You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me" (wondrous), "When Your Lover Has Gone" and "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone". Her version of "I Got Rhythm" is the highlight of a brilliant disc - she shows Merman who's got rhythm, playing with tempos and words with each verse, bending the melody, scatting marvelously, doing a duet with Manny Klein on trumpet and clearly having a ball with a superb band that includes Klein and the Dorsey brothers. Great, great stuff - still a revelation after all these years."