Dinah Washington

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singer

Personal Information

Born Ruth Jones, on August 29, 1924, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; died on December 14, 1963, of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills; daughter of Ollie Jones and Alice Williams; married John Young 1942-43, George Jenkins circa. 1949, Walter Buchanan 1950, Eddie Chamblee 1957, Raphael Campos 1957, Horatio Maillard 1959-60, Jackie Hayes 1960, Richard Lane 1963 (all marriages not confirmed); children, two.

Career

won talent contest as Chicago's Regal Theater 1938; sang in gospel circuit; 1943 left religious field to perform in Chicago area nightclubs; joined Lionel Hampton's orchestra 1943, and recorded on Keynote label; recorded on Apollo label in Los Angeles 1945; embarked on solo career 1946; signed contract with Mercury Records in 1948, and over the next decade recorded over three hundred sides; 1958 appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival; in 1959 toured Europe signed with the Roulette label in 1962 and owned a Detroit restaurant; performed with Count Basie and Duke Ellington 1963.

Life's Work

Known as "The Queen" or "Miss D," vocalist Dinah Washington emerged one of the most versatile cross-over artists of the post World War era. Her gospel-trained voice--noted for its rhythmical precision and tonal clarity--performed blues, jazz, and ballads with equal authority. Arnold Shaw, in his book Honkers and Shouters: Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues, stated "She had a flutelike voice, sinuous, caressing, and penetrating. Master of all devices of the blues and gospel shadings--the bent notes, the broken notes, the slides, the anticipations, and the behind-the-beat notes--she handled them with intensity that came from her early church training." Between 1948 and 1961 Washington made over 400 sides with the Mercury label, recordings that reveal her diversity and popular acclaim. Renown for her offstage brashness and erratic behavior, Washington spent these years struggling to maintain a successful music career while overcoming the affects of numerous marriages and sporadic crash dieting. Until her death in 1963 she toured nationally playing nightclubs and large venues such as Las Vegas and Carnegie Hall--a 20-year career that influenced younger singers from Ruth Brown to Nancy Wilson.

Dinah Washington was born Ruth Lee Jones in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on August 29, 1924. At age three Ruth's parents Ollie Jones and Alice Williams took her to Chicago. By age 11 Jones performed as a gospel vocalist and often appeared with her mother (who served her first music instructor) at church recitals across the country. In 1938 the 15-year old vocalist won first prize at an amateur contest at Chicago's Regal Theatre. She married at 17 and subsequently worked in local nightclubs. Jones studied vocals with renown gospel singer Sallie Martin and became her piano accompanist. Around 1943 she left the gospel field and sang in various Chicago nightclubs, including the Rhumboogie and the Down Beat Room. Jones worked as washroom attendant at a downtown lounge, the Garrick, often singing with the house band led by trumpeter Walter Fuller.

With Lionel Hampton

In 1943 Jones' performances at the Garrick gained the attention of music manager Joe Glaser who informed bandleader Lionel Hampton about the young singing washroom attendant. Hampton, whose band was booked at Chicago's Regal Theatre came to listened to the young singer. Immediately impressed, he invited her to sit-in with his orchestra. Following Jones' impressive Regal guest-performance Hampton hired the young vocalist and gave her the stage name Dinah Washington (other sources credit the name change to Glaser or the Garrick's owner, Joe Sherman). Because of the American Federation of Musician's recording ban (August 1942 to October 1943), and the fact that Hampton's contract with Decca solely required instrumental music, Washington recorded only one side during her three-year stint with the orchestra. Though not a featured recording artist, Washington's live performances with Hampton's orchestra became legendary. As Hampton recalled, in his memoir Hamp, "Dinah alone could stop the show....I had to put her down next to closing, because nobody could follow her. She had a background in gospel, and she put something new into the popular songs I had her sing."

Washington's recording break came in 1943 when pianist and songwriter Leonard Feather organized a session for Eric Bernay's independent company, Keynote. For the session Feather recruited the Lionel Hampton Sextet which included Hampton on drums and pianist Milt Buckner. The Keynote recordings featured Feather's numbers "Evil Gal Blues" and "Salty Papa Blues," which became hits within the African American record market. Despite the success of her blues recordings, Washington did not return to the studio until May of 1945 when she cut Leonard Feather's "Blow Top Blues" with the Lionel Hampton Sextet (a single that later became a 1947 hit). While in Los Angeles in December of 1945, Washington made several blues recordings for the Apollo label. Backed by saxophonist Lucky Thompson's eight piece band, the Apollo dates featured several guest musicians such as Charles Mingus and vibraphonist Milt Jackson. Washington's voice on the Apollo sides, noted Arnold Shaw in Honkers and Shouters, "had a velvet sheen, and, in its bluer moments, it tore like silk, not satin."

Embarked On Solo Career

In late 1946 Washington left Hampton's band for a solo career. During the same year, she recorded her anthem "Slick Chick on the Mellow Side" for Verve Records. Around this time, Washington received the billing "The Queen of the Blues"--a title she vehemently rejected (originally the title belonged to Bessie Smith). Yet she could sing blues with authority, as evidenced on her 1947 number "Long John Blues." Written by Washington "Long John Blues" told, in double entendre and bawdy lyricism, the tale of a dentist lover and his sexually satisfying ways.

In 1948 Washington signed a contract with the recently founded Mercury label and cut the single "West Side Baby." In 1949 she scored number one on the Billboard Charts with "Baby Get Lost." A year later, she recorded with the saxophonist Dave Young's orchestra, and by 1952 scored a number four hit with the blues classic "Trouble in Mind." By 1953 Washington made numerous sides with strings. As Mercury records producer Bobby Shad recalled, in Honkers and Shouters, "I recorded Dinah with strings and probably cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars ... She was a fantastic singer, unbelievable artist. But you had to catch her on the right night. She thought nothing of being up all night to eight a.m. and then record at ten a.m."

Recorded Jazz Material

During the mid to late 1950s Washington recorded in the company of many of the finest jazz musicians of the period from drummer Jimmy Cobb to saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderly. Washington's 1954 album, Dinah Jams, caught her in a live Mercury studio date. The LP's Los Angeles-based sessions included a nucleus group made up of the newly formed Clifford-Brown Max Roach Quintet, and guest trumpeters Clark Terry and Maynard Ferguson, as well as Washington's sideman, pianist Junior Mance and bassist Keeter Betts. During March of 1955, Washington returned to the studio. Rejoined by Cobb, Terry, and other guests including saxophonist Paul Quinchette and pianist Wynton Kelly, she recorded the LP Dinah Washington: For Those in Love. Arranged by Quincy Jones, this jazz-based collection of standards included "This Can't Be Love," "I Could Write a Book," and "You Don't Know What Love Is." The latter number, noted Barry Kernfield in The Blackwell Record Guide, "is a song of love leading to agony," and "[Washington] convinces us that she knows fully, direct from experience." Among the album's plaintive torch songs, "Blue Gardenia," noted Jazz scholar Dan Morgenstern, in the liner notes to Dinah Washington, The Jazz Sides, emerged "one of Dinah's greatest ballads. The tune and lyric are first-rate, and she creates and sustains a rare mood....Dinah does the bridge ad lib and then the band follows her out as she reaches the lofty plateau inhabited by Billie Holiday."

Despite her expanding artistic talent, Washington possessed a difficult and demanding personality. In 1957 she worked an extended engagement at Chicago's Roberts Show Club. In The Autobiography of Black Jazz, the club's owner, Herman Roberts, recalled, "Dinah was a very complex person ... If I made a comment about her show and she knew it wasn't her idea, she would automatically reject it. She wanted to be the creator of everything she did." As Roberts added, "She was both vain and insecure," and would "cuss out" customers "without really knowing whether they were saying something derogatory or whether they were complimenting her." In the following years, Washington would often make headlines regarding foul-mouthed comments and abrupt behavior. She often appeared in multi-colored wigs, full length and tight fitting-dresses, and was known to openly criticize performers whom she considered distastefully dressed.

Broke Into Pop Market

By 1957 Washington married her fifth husband, tenor saxophonist Eddie Chamblee, and would, over the next few years, marry four more times (though not all of these nine marriages were legally confirmed). Though she suffered through several successive short-lived marriages and battled personal problems, Washington continued on a promising music career. She performed two sets at 1958 Newport Jazz Festival--one of which appeared in part for the documentary film Jazz On a Summer's Day. After years of being featured as a blues and jazz-style singer she broke into the pop music market with the 1959 Mercury single "What a Difference a Day Makes" (written and listed on the original recording as "What a Diff'rence a Day Made"). The single made the top ten, appeared on Billboard's 1959 honor roll of hits, and won a Grammy for best R&B record. During the following year, Washington topped the Billboard charts with two pop duets sung with Brook Benton, "Baby (you've Got What it Takes)" and "A Rockin' Good Day." 1960 also saw the release Washington's hit single "This Bitter Earth." A ballad set in an orchestral accompaniment, "This Bitter Earth" opens in bleak lyrical mood and, by its closing lines, is transformed by Washington into a ballad of love found within an otherwise cold and uncaring world.

Voted as one of the "Giants of Jazz" (in the vocalist category) in Leonard Feather's 1960 work, The Encyclopedia of Jazz, Washington began the decade in anticipation of reaching new artistic and commercial heights. During 1962 she recorded for the Roulette label. Though most of Washington's Roulette material proved weak pop material, she did cut Back to the Blues, an album that, as John Koetzner noted in Jazz: The Essential Record Guide, "captures the moment when Washington made an effort to return to her roots, and while it might not quite get there, she handles the material in such a way that it recalls her best singing on those early records." Six of the tracks were co-written by Washington, and, as Koetzner added, "she closes with 'Me and My Gin,' and there's an ominous sense that's she's long been living the song."

Around the time of her Roulette recordings, Washington established a small restaurant in Detroit. In 1963 she worked with Count Basie in Chicago and Duke Ellington in Detroit. That same year, at age 39, she married her ninth husband, Detroit Lions defensive back, Dick "Nightrane" Lane. Recently married and not planning to perform until after the New Year, Washington, who persistently fought to keep her weight down, went on a crash diet. On December 14, 1963, she died from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. Singer Ruth Brown recalled, in her memoir Miss Rhythm, "I know Dinah's death was accidental, for that lady had too much in life to ever put an end to it. I believe she got those pills mixed up because she was desperately trying to lose weight with the aid of mercury injections pumped into her by her 'weight doctor'....We know today that mercury builds up in the system and can cause liver failure....[Her] final deadly cocktail of brandy and sleeping pills" may have quickly ended her life. Washington's funeral services were held by prominent Detroit church leader, Reverend C.L. Franklin (the father of Aretha Franklin) at his New Bethel Church, where the Queen's body laid in a bronze coffin.

Washington left behind a vast body of work containing powerfully moving performances and accompaniment by some the finest jazz and studio musicians of the period. Often backed by modernist jazzmen, she nevertheless remained uninfluenced by the scat stylings of bebop. A powerful exponent of blues, Washington's role in the idiom has, nevertheless, been overemphasized by journalistic music writers (despite her stereotyped billing as "blues singer" she is rarely listed in books on the subject). By emphasizing Washington's early blues period many writers have overlooked her gospel training--the integral influence responsible for a projecting delivery and vibrant soulfulness. Proud of her claim that she could sing any kind of music, Washington possessed, as Linda Dahl asserted in Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazz Women, "a riveting personality" which "came through all her material." Testament to her musical diversity, Washington is often mentioned in works dealing with jazz, blues, and rhythm and blues.

Today Washington's voice accompanies commercials and film soundtracks such as Bridges of Madison Country, which included the numbers "Blue Gardenia" and "Soft Winds." Among the large number of her rerelease are The Complete Dinah Washington on Mercury Vol. I-7, a seven volume CD set as well as reissues of her earlier blues material. In 1993 the US Postal Service issued, as part of a tribute to rhythm and blues singers series, a stamp in the Queen's honor, reminding Americans of a great vocalist and a woman of unique character and uncompromising integrity.

Awards

National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Grammy Award for Best R&B recording of 1959 (What a Diff'rence a Day Makes). In 1960 voted as one of top ten vocalists of jazz in Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz; In 1993 the US Postal Service posthumously dedicated a stamp in Washington's honor as part of a tribute to rhythm and blues artists.

Works

Selected discography

• Dinah Washington, Mellow Mama, (1945 Apollo recordings), Delmark, 1992.
• Dinah Washington, The Queen of the Blues 1943-1947, EPM (French CD import), 1998.
• Dinah Washington, The Complete on Mercury, Vol I (1946-49), Vol. 2 (1950-52), Vol. 3 (1952-54), Vol. 4 (1954-56), Vol. 5 (1956-59), Vol. 6 (1958-60), Vol. 7 (1962-65), EmArcy, 1989.
• Dinah Washington, The Jazz Sides, EmArcy, 1976.
• Dinah Jams, (recorded 1954), EmArcy, CD reissue 1990.
• Dinah Washington, In the Land of Hifi, EmArcy, 1956.
• What a Diff'rence a Day Makes, EmArcy.
• September in the Rain, EmArcy.
• Unforgettable, EmArcy.
• I Concentrate on You, EmArcy.
• For Lonely Lovers, EmArcy.
• The Fats Waller Songbook, EmArcy.
• Dinah '62, Roulette.
• Back to the Blues, Roulette.
• Dinah Washington, Jazz Masters 15, Verve, 1994.
• Dinah Washington Sings Standards, Jazz Masters 40, Verve, 1994.
• Ultimate Dinah Washington, Verve, 1997.
• Slick Chick (On the Mellow Side), Indigo Records, 1997.
• The Ultimate Dinah Washington (as selected by Abbey Lincoln), Verve, 1997.
• The Singin' Miss D, Verve, 1998.

Further Reading

Books

• The Blackwell Guide to Recorded Jazz, second edition, edited by Barry Kernfield, pp. 335-336.
• Brown Ruth, Miss Rhythm: The Autobiography of Ruth Brown, Rhythm and Blues Legend, Donald Fine Books, 1996, pp. 247-249.
• Dahl, Linda, Stormy Weather: The Music and the Lives of a Century of Jazz Women, Limelight, 1984, p. 53.
• Dempsey, Travis J, An Autobiography of Black Jazz, Urban Research Institute, 1983, pp. 192-194.
• Feather, Leonard, The Encyclopedia of Jazz, Da Capo, 1960, p. 90.
• Hampton, Lionel, with James Haskins, Hamp: An Autobiography, Warner Books, 1989, pp. 85-88.
• Koetzner, John, Music Hound; Jazz, The Essential record Guide, Invisible Ink Press.
• Shaw, Arnold, Black Popular Music in America: From the Spirituals, Minstrels, and Ragtime, to Soul, Disco, and Hip-Hop, Schirmer, 1986, pp. 181-182.
• Shaw, Arnold, Honkers and Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues, MacMillan, 1978, pp. 143-147.

Other

• Liner notes: Dan Morgenstern, Dinah Washington, The Jazz Sides, EmArcy, 1976.

— John Cohassey

See Dinah Washington Lyrics

• Born: August 29, 1924, Tuscaloosa, AL
• Died: December 14, 1963, Detroit, MI
• Active: '40s, '50s, '60s
• Genres: Vocal Music
• Instrument: Vocals
• Representative Albums: "Dinah Jams," "The Complete Dinah Washington on Mercury, Vol. 5 (1956-1958)," "The Complete Dinah Washington on Mercury, Vol. 4 (1954-1956)"
• Representative Songs: "Mad About the Boy," "Unforgettable," "What a Diff'rence a Day Made"

Biography

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

Mad About the Boy [Prism Leisure] Buy this CD	Queen Dinah Buy this CD	Definitive Dinah Washington Buy this CD	Swingin' Miss 'D' [Bonus Tracks] Buy this CD	Mastercuts Buy this CD
Teach Me Tonight Buy this CD	Birdland Broadcasts 1951-1952 Buy this CD	Jazz Hour with Dinah Washington: Dinah and Clifford Buy this CD	Sings the Standards Buy this CD	Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Best of Dinah Washington Buy this CD

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