WATERS

WATERS (née HOWARD), ETHEL. Blues singer/Actress (31 October 1896 [1900?] in Chester, Pennsylvania; 1 September 1977 in Chats-worth, California). She came from a musical family; her father played piano and her mother and maternal relatives sang. She first sang publicly at the age of five, billed as Baby Star, in a local church program. At the age of seventeen she began singing professionally with a small vaudeville company (although her mother had to sign a paper stating her age as...