... Bessie Smith Sophie Tucker Ethel Waters belter blues ...

... Ethel Waters Juanita Hall Pearl Bailey mammy torch song ...

... of what was being transmitted. The reader is invited to listen for lessons in the first three decades of the twentieth century—lessons both acknowledged and disavowed—attended by Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, Sophie Tucker, Ethel Waters, and Ethel Merman. Attuned to the multiplicity of vocal colors...

... By the 1930s, Tin Pan Alley’s diluted blues became the sad torch song of the weary-bluesy mammy, a type Ethel Waters was repeatedly called upon to voice. This character type existed in contrast to the Broadway blues mama persona that Zora Neale Hurston envisioned for Waters, and roles taken up...