• Track Listing

Ethel Waters was a singer and actress from Pennsylvania, whose music ranged across jazz, stage musicals, movies and pure pop in a career that spanned more than three decades. During the 1920s and '30s she recorded what were among the original versions of some of the most memorable standards of the era. Having performed as a child in vaudeville, she started her recording career at the dawn of the jazz age around the time she became a huge attraction on Broadway. This great-value 70-track 3-CD collection includes recordings from across her active career as a hit-focused recording artist before she turned her attention to TV. It comprises selected releases during this era on the Black Swan, Columbia, Brunswick, Decca, Bluebird and RCA labels, and features all her twenty-six career hits, including the No. 1s "Stormy Weather" and "Am I Blue", and other notable classics. It includes performances with Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Clarence Williams, James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, Coleman Hawkins, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Ben Selvin, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Bunny Berigan, Benny Carter and many others. She was one of the great song stylists of her era, and a unique personality, and this collection is a fabulous showcase for her distinctive talents.