Review

November, 25th 2016

Ruth Etting was known with her velvety classic voice long before the birth of the major part of the readers of our site. Easy-listening romance-genre song of the first part of the past century (1928 was the originating year of a song).
The original emergence of a song was thanks to the songwriter Ray Henderson and a singer Annette Hanshaw (she first sang it on the scene and it was in 1928 in a Broadway’s musical ‘Hold Everything!’). The song was recorded purposefully for Mrs. Hanshaw, and since the time, many other performers re-recorded it, covering and singing as it was. Even incredible Marlene Dietrich included a cover in her album of 1959. ‘Cream In My Coffee’ was also a TV show lasting less than a year in 1980 and the song of almost the same name was a headliner.
Ruth Etting, who sang this song one of many, died already, in 1978 aged 80 and Annette Hanshaw, the original performer also died in 1985 aged 83. What is interesting – despite the age and long life, she wasn’t active after 1937 (her career lasted only 11 years), so it means that she was out of business for 48 years! So what happened to the original performer of this song, who sold more than 4 millions of physical records even before 1934 arrived? (Which is fantastic achievement even for today, by the way). Her entire family was connected to the show biz, her father even ran away to join the circus. She had various impersonating people and pseudonyms. The secret is that she was afraid of singing all this time and had a low opinion of her vocal abilities. Today this is called the ‘stage fear,’ but she didn’t know that 80 years ago. She disliked even the entire show biz itself, hating every and each record, for two reasons – her vocal and the quality of recording available at those days. Eventually, she dropped the idea of participating in the biz. She loved singing, but for herself. The professional singing she did only for money, which aroused the disgust inside of her. She tried to come back, but most of all she loved being a housewife.
Ruth Etting was a contemporary of Annette Hanshaw and it turned out Mrs. Etting did the cover on the song by Mrs. Hanshaw, which only contributed to the passion of the latter to listen to the first. Ruth Etting was mainly known for extreme public disputes of her private life, when she was dating the younger man, her pianist, instead of a husband, who found out she was dating another and attempted to kill her, him, and her daughter. He was imprisoned later and there were numerous trials, where Mrs. Etting was accused of marrying to her former husband only for money and career. There were maximal rumors, completely overshadowing her singing achievements.
She died close to her new second husband, a piano player, who died 12 years before her. They are buried in the same cemetery, in one mausoleum. She left around 60 singles as the legacy, amongst which only one topped the weekly hit parades. Reference: More about Ruth Etting, her song "You're The Cream In My Coffee" and Catherine Annette Hanshaw, an American Jazz Age singer