Ethel Agnes Zimmermann was born in Queens on 16 January 1908 and grew up surrounded by a comfortable, middle-class family.183 Like many families of the time, music was a part of her home life. Her mother sang as an alto in a small choir and her father (a bookkeeper in lower Manhattan) played the organ at his local Masonic Lodge. He also played keyboards in a small, local, amateur dance band, and the piano at home on Sunday afternoons and after work (C. Flinn 2007, 9). Ethel sang as her father played, and the louder he played, the louder she sang.
Merman began singing in public from the age of five. Billed as “Little Ethel Zimmerman”, she sang for picnics at the Women’s Republican Club of Astoria, at Masonic Lodges, local churches and the Chamber of Commerce, as well as entering singing contests. During the First World War, she sang for troops stationed at Camp Mills and Camp Upton on Long Island. At this time, according to biographer Geoffrey Mark:
[h]er range was wide, but her tone was clear as a bell. Her voice actually reverberated like a chime. It was unique and easy to hear…Ethel approached her singing with such enthusiasm that the audiences would cheer with excitement. Her vibrato was natural and fast, much different than the sound of her adult years. Her New Yorky accent, which always evidenced itself in her work, was also much stronger in her youth (Mark 2006, 14).
After graduation, Merman began working as a secretary during the day and singing at nightclubs in the evening. Vinton Freedley (co-producer of Girl Crazy) heard Merman sing for the first time during her performances with Al Seigel between screenings of the latest movie features at the Brooklyn Paramount. He listened with amazement to her “big, bold sound … articulating every syllable perfectly ... was exactly the sort of singer likely to appeal to the Gershwins” (Kellow 2007, 25). He arranged her audition with the Gershwin brothers, and Merman was hired.
Over a thirty-year period, Merman appeared in a staggering thirteen hit musicals. She smashed into Broadway stardom on 14 October 1930 as Kate Fothergill in the Gershwin
183 The family lived on the top floor of the three-storey duplex, the ground floor was rented out and the
second floor was home to relatives from her mother’s side of the family. Another aunt lived not far around the corner. Ibid. 5-6.
brothers’ hit comedy Girl Crazy with “abandon and conviction”,184
“dash, authority, good voice and just the right knowing style.”185
She “tied the proceedings up in knots”186
stopping the show for encore after encore. In a simple, slit black skirt and low-cut, red blouse, only five minutes after bringing down the house singing “Sam and Delilah”, Merman launched into the first act finale “I Got Rhythm” and into Broadway history. Dienstfrey (1986) quotes Merman:
In the second chorus of ‘I Got Rhythm,’ I held a high C note for 16 bars while the orchestra played the melodic line – a big, tooty thing – against the note. By the time I’d held that note for four bars the audience was applauding. They applauded through the whole chorus and I did several encores. It seemed to do something to them. Not because it was sweet or beautiful, but because it was exciting. Few people have the ability to project a big note and hold it. It’s not just a matter of breath; it’s a matter of power in the diaphragm. I’d never trained my diaphragm, but I must have a strong one. When I finished that song, a star had been born. Me.
Biographer Geoffrey Mark claims the band played at double speed while Merman held that top note, and that the note was not a C4 but an A4 Merman did not record any of her songs from Girl Crazy until many years later and, while the 1947 version includes several sustained C4s held over the orchestra, the final sustained note lasts for four bars, not for the legendary sixteen. Nonetheless, those who attended the 1930 opening night support the veracity of Merman’s claim. Her performance was out of the ordinary, and the audience was amazed and excited. Writer and lyricist Dorothy Fields recalled that she had “never seen anything like it on the stage…[n]o one had ever held a note like that…beyond the length of endurance.”187
Another writer said it was “a feat equivalent to swimming the length of an Olympic-size pool at least twice without coming up for air.”188
One reviewer reported, “Miss Merman’s effect…was such that there was every reason to believe that they would make her sing it all night.”189 Pianist Roger Edens, who took over for the second act when Merman’s pianist Al Siegel was rushed to hospital during interval, remembers that she had to do ten encores before the show
184New York World, 15 October 1930. 185
New York Herald Tribune, 15 October 1930.
186
New York Daily Mirror, 15 October 1930.
187 Quoted in C. Flinn Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman 2007, p.33. 188 Ibid.
189
could continue.190
The long-held “I-I-I-I-I-I-I” became a trademark of subsequent superstar belters such as Judy Garland and Barbara Streisand. It contributed to the legend of the belt voice, not so much as a natural quality, but as something unusual, something superhuman. On the Judy Garland Show thirty years later, Merman and Garland stood together and sang an A4 over the band playing a chorus of “I Got Rhythm” for the equivalent of ten common time bars at a tempo of crotchet = mm120. “Well Judy dear,” asks the bright voice of Merman, “Are you all warmed up?” Garland’s warm, husky voice replies, “Mmmm, yes Ethel…..and you sing just as loud as ever.”