What are you listening to ?

Ethel Waters from the 1943 movie Cabin In The Sky. After starting out with risqué song and dance routines in vaudeville in the '20's, she introduced standards like Georgia On My Mind and Stormy Weather that became huge hits for other artists. She lived very large which was unusual for a black artist in those days. Later she was Emmy and Oscar nominated for dramatic acting. In her later years she was very overweight and became a born-again Christian and performed on Billy Graham's crusades. She was notoriously difficult to work with and that may be part of the reason she's pretty much unknown today.

The whole movie is a dream sequence after Little Joe has been stabbed, The Lord and the Devil are vying for his soul. After he gets tempted by Georgia Brown, his previously strictly-devout wife Petunia crosses over to the dark side herself in a nightclub which is very entertaining to watch...