Ethel Waters: Black and Blue

April Fool's Day, 1930. Ethel Waters covers a self-pitying song from Broadway's Hot Chocolates (1929) that Louis Armstrong had recorded with lyrics reworked to universalize the plight of being black in a white world. Waters, however, restores the original complaint of a dark-skinned woman shunned by "all the race fellows" who "crave high yellows" (pale-complexioned Negroes). Since "gentlemen prefer them light," Waters laments, "I'm just another spade who can't make the grade." An accomplished actress as well as a first-rate vocalist, Waters puts this across with conviction. But did she mean it? Let's hope she announced, when finished, "April fool!"