Bread and Gravy: The Songs and Life of Ethel Waters

October 31 being Ethel Waters’ birthday, I thought I’d give you an early head’s up about an exciting upcoming musical show that celebrates her life and work.

Bread and Gravy: The Songs and Life of Ethel Waters is the brainchild of Frank Cullen and Donald McNeilly. If those names sound familiar, it’s because we drop them here from time. They ran the American Vaudeville Museum out of Boston (the Keith-Albee hometown) for decades and wrote the amazing two volume encyclopedia Vaudeville: Old and New, a towering achievement, and indispensable resource for theatrical researchers. They also used to be involved in theatre in Provincetown for years and never lost the bug.

Now semi-retired and living in New Mexico, they developed this labor of love which The Jubilee Theatre premiered to sold out houses at the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth back in March. It’s returning for a month-long run this coming February (2024), which I can’t help noting is Black History Month. So, East Texans, mark your calendars! And the rest of you do so, too. If the creek don’t rise, I’ll have some sort of interview with the gents about their project, Ethel, jazz, vaudeville, and what have you at that time. Til then, my post about Ethel Waters, one of the oldest articles on Travalanche, is here.