Dinah Washington
Albums
Prior to her 1959 hit "What a Difference a Day Makes," nearly every Dinah Washington recording (no matter what the style) was of interest to jazz listeners. However, after her [more]
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![Dinah '62 [Bonus Tracks]](/cache/JHS/f9/130x130_on-sale_f93856wf0fd.png)
The first of five LPs Dinah Washington recorded for Roulette during her last year and a half of life, Dinah '62 finds one of the foremost interpreters in vocal jazz [more]
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![Ballads [Audiophile]](/cache/JHS/f4/130x130_on-sale_f49387mxvup.png)
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This is a three-CD budget collection of Dinah Washington performances with a number of top-flight ensembles. The sound quality varies from good to listenable, and although the [more]
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![What a Diff'rence a Day Makes! [SACD]](/cache/JHS/g1/130x130_g13413swzqs.jpg)
One of the more notorious albums in the history of vocal music, What a Diff'rence a Day Makes! is the lush session that bumped up Dinah Washington from the [more]
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Dinah Washington's digital discography is riddled with compilations that brandish the word "Gold," as in "Golden Classics," "Golden Hits," "Golden Songs," "Golden Greats," "Golden Stars," [more]
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Appearances
The classic songs of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart are rendered on this outstanding three-disc set, which features vocalists like Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, [more]
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This is not and cannot be the Complete Cole Porter Songbooks, but it's a marvelous collection of 48 timeless jazz interpretations drawn from the Verve catalog. [more]
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One of the giants of American popular song gets his due with this three-disc Verve box, comprising a trio of separately released compilations. Though Mercer's [more]
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In jazz, ballads have a way of separating the men from the boys and the women from the girls. They show what an improviser is made of emotionally. On ballads, [more]
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Prior to her 1959 hit "What a Difference a Day Makes," nearly every Dinah Washington recording (no matter what the style) was of interest to jazz listeners. However, after her [more]
- List Price: $16.99
- Member Price: $11.98
Although Rhino's four-disc box set, Q: The Musical Biography of Quincy Jones, was released to coincide with Quincy Jones' autobiography, and that's what gives [more]
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The first of five LPs Dinah Washington recorded for Roulette during her last year and a half of life, Dinah '62 finds one of the foremost interpreters in vocal jazz [more]
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- Member Price: $7.99
All 3 volumes of the acclaimed Verve Gershwin Songbook series - presenting over 3 hours of great jazz singers and instrumentalists performing 48 [more]
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Trumpeter Clifford Brown had a brief career. He started playing jazz in the late '40s but was killed in a car accident in 1956 (along with pianist Richie Powell, younger [more]
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![Have Yourself a Jazzy Little Christmas [Verve]](/cache/JHS/f6/130x130_f68678mxvup.jpg)
This 15-track CD has something for everyone: the smooth vocal styling of Billy Eckstine on "Christmas Eve," and the purring Dinah Washington on the [more]
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Biography
- Born Aug 29th 1924 in Tuscaloosa, AL
- Died Dec 14th 1963 in Detroit, MI
Dinah Washington was at once one of the most beloved and controversial singers of the mid-20th century -- beloved to her fans, devotees, and fellow singers; controversial to critics who still accuse her of selling out her art to commerce and bad taste. Her principal sin, apparently, was to cultivate a distinctive vocal style that was at home in all kinds of music, be it R&B, blues, jazz, middle of the road pop -- and she probably would have made a fine gospel or country singer had she the time. Hers was a gritty, salty, high-pitched voice, marked by absolute clarity of diction and clipped, bluesy phrasing. Washington's personal life was turbulent, with seven marriages behind her, and her interpretations showed it, for she displayed a tough, totally unsentimental, yet still gripping hold on the universal subject of lost love. She has had a huge influence on R&B and jazz singers who have followed in her wake, notably Nancy Wilson, Esther Phillips, and Diane Schuur, and her music is abundantly available nowadays via the huge seven-volume series The Complete Dinah Washington on Mercury.
Born Ruth Lee Jones, she moved to Chicago at age three and was raised in a world of gospel, playing the piano and directing her church choir. At 15, after winning an amateur contest at the Regal Theatre, she began performing in nightclubs as a pianist and singer, opening at the Garrick Bar in 1942. Talent manager Joe Glaser heard her there and recommended her to Lionel Hampton, who asked her to join his band. Hampton says that it was he who gave Ruth Jones the name Dinah Washington, although other sources claim it was Glaser or the manager of the Garrick Bar. In any case, she stayed with Hampton from 1943 to 1946 and made her recording debut for Keynote at the end of 1943 in a blues session organized by Leonard Feather with a sextet drawn from the Hampton band. With Feather's "Evil Gal Blues" as her first hit, the records took off, and by the time she left Hampton to go solo, Washington was already an R&B headliner. Signing with the young Mercury label, Washington produced an enviable string of Top Ten hits on the R&B charts from 1948 to 1955, singing blues, standards, novelties, pop covers, even Hank Williams' "Cold, Cold Heart." She also recorded many straight jazz sessions with big bands and small combos, most memorably with Clifford Brown on Dinah Jams but also with Cannonball Adderley, Clark Terry, Ben Webster, Wynton Kelly, and the young Joe Zawinul (who was her regular accompanist for a couple of years).
In 1959, Washington made a sudden breakthrough into the mainstream pop market with "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes," a revival of a Dorsey Brothers hit set to a Latin American bolero tune. For the rest of her career, she would concentrate on singing ballads backed by lush orchestrations for Mercury and Roulette, a formula similar to that of another R&B-based singer at that time, Ray Charles, and one that drew plenty of fire from critics even though her basic vocal approach had not changed one iota. Although her later records could be as banal as any easy listening dross of the period, there are gems to be found, like Billie Holiday's "Don't Explain," which has a beautiful, bluesy Ernie Wilkins chart conducted by Quincy Jones. Struggling with a weight problem, Washington died of an accidental overdose of diet pills mixed with alcohol at the tragically early age of 39, still in peak voice, still singing the blues in an L.A. club only two weeks before the end. ~ Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide
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