Ethel and me

Let me see now, how can I relate this one about my mid-sixties interview with Ethel Waters, the first Black superstar, to early radio history. You oughta know that I have an ace in the hole.

Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear and Jazz Age Evangelism. It's the Roaring Twenties and a fiery preacher, Paul Rader, is sermonizing on the air from a wooden building atop the Chicago city Hall, beginning what will become the electronic church. He will later become the pastor of the historic Moody Memorial Church, named for Dwight L. Moody. After that he is a high powered entrepreneur of evangelism, building big Christian campgrounds and tabernacles that attract thousands. The biggest and best is the Chicago Gospel Tabernacle. Of special interest to historians of early religious radio, Paul Rader preached for three months at the Angelus Temple of the most colorful of evangelists, Aimee Semple McPherson, during her strange and still questioned disappearance. I'm still working on a post about her.


In the late twenties, Rader journeys across Lake Michigan to Muskegon, my town, and buys 200 acres on the big Lake where he builds Camp Chi-Co-Tab, named for his Chicago Tabernacle. By 1936 the facility was sold and became Maranatha Bible and Missionary Conference.

By the mid '60s, after getting canned from Grand Rapids station WMAX, I was in Muskegon at an Evangelical Christian station, WKJR. Ethel Waters, then in her 70s and not in good health, was here for an appearance at Maranatha. My interview has not been preserved but I'm sure it was mostly about her personal story and her commitment to her religious work, including her appearances in the Billy Graham Crusades. I don't recall if I asked her what she thought of the "Cabin in the sky" film from twenty years earlier. She continued to sing the title song, along with her beloved signature song, "His eye is on the Sparrow," also the title of her autobiography, throughout her lifetime. She sang "Sparrow" with young Brandon De Wilde and Julie Harris in the 1952 film, "Member of the Wedding." Here is a You Tube of it. If it doesn't make you blubber or at least get all misty, you're not as sentimental as this silly old blogger. The film did not get great reviews, with complaints that Julie Harris was too old to play a 12 year old. Who cares. I love what I love and I don't care if nobody else loves it.

Ethel Waters lived until 1977, so she certainly experienced the civil rights movement but I don't know if she spoke of it.

Update July 1: I found Ethel's Lp on the Word label that I thought I had sold when I was all hot to restore the antique radio. "Just a little talk with Ethel." There's a brief talk track, recorded at her home not long before she died, before each song. Now I must find a thrift store record player so I can listen to it. Thank goodness I didn't get totally stupid and let that one go when I sold off my precious junk.

One biographer wrote that Ethel Waters "got religion," a demeaning phrase that I don't like very much. There have certainly been questionable "conversions" by the famous and not-so=famous. I have doubts about Hustler Magazine's Larry Flynt and I will reserve judgment on Jane Fonda and for Bettie Page, who also worked with Billy Graham. But for Ethel Waters it was a genuine and deep commitment to a faith that she believed and practiced for the rest of her life.

Ethel Waters kissed me on the cheek after that interview. Looking back at almost 50 years in the wacky, wildly unstable radio business, that memory makes it all worthwhile.