Dinah Washington
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| Dinah Washington | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Ruth Lee Jones |
| Also known as | Queen of the Blues |
| Born | August 29, 1924 |
| Origin | Tuscaloosa, Alabama, U.S. |
| Died | December 14, 1963 (aged 39) |
| Genre(s) | Blues, R&B, Jazz |
| Occupation(s) | Singer |
| Years active | 1943 – 1963 |
| Label(s) | Keynote, Mercury, EmArcy, Roulette |
Dinah Washington (August 29, 1924 – December 14, 1963) was a blues, R&B and jazz singer. Because of her strong voice and emotional singing, she is known as the "Queen of the Blues".[1] Despite dying at the early age of 39, Washington became one of the most influential vocalists of the twentieth century,[2][3] credited among others as a major influence on Aretha Franklin.[4][5] She is a 1986 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.
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[edit] Early life
Washington was born Ruth Lee Jones in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Her family moved to Chicago while she was still a child. As a child in Chicago she played piano and directed her church choir. She later studied in Walter Dyett's renowned music program at DuSable High School. At 16 as Ruth Jones, she toured the United States' black gospel circuit with Roberta Martin accompanying her at the piano.[6] There was a period when she both performed in clubs as Dinah Washington while singing and playing piano in Sallie Martin's gospel choir as Ruth Jones.
Her penetrating voice, excellent timing and crystal-clear enunciation added her own distinctive style to every piece she performed. While making extraordinary recordings in jazz, blues, R&B and light pop contexts, Washington refused to record gospel music despite her obvious talent in singing it. She believed it wrong to mix the secular and the spiritual, and after she had entered the non-religious professional music world she refused to include gospel in her repertoire. She began performing as a teenager in 1942 and soon joined Lionel Hampton's band. There is some dispute about the origin of her name. Some sources say the manager of the Garrick Stage Bar gave her the name Dinah Washington, while others say Hampton selected it.
[edit] Rise and fall
In 1943, she began recording for Keynote Records and released the 12-bar blues "Evil Gal Blues", her first hit. She then switched to Chicago-based Mercury Records and from 1948 to 1955, she had numerous hits on the R&B charts, including "Am I Asking Too Much", "Baby, Get Lost," "Trouble in Mind", ""I Won't Cry Anymore", "TV is The Thing This Year", "Teach Me Tonight" and a cover of Hank Williams's "Cold, Cold Heart". In March 1957, she married tenor saxophonist Eddie Chamblee (formerly on tour with Lionel Hampton), who led the band behind her. In 1958 she made a well-received appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival.
With "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes" in 1959, Washington won a Grammy Award for Best Rhythm and Blues Performance. The song was her first top ten hit in the Pop charts, reaching #8 on the Billboard Hot 100, although most of her releases had reached the R & B Top Ten.
The commercially driven album of the same name, with its heavy reliance on strings and wordless choruses, was slammed by jazz and blues critics for being too commercial and for straying from her blues roots. Despite this, it was a huge success and from that point, Washington continued to favor more commercial, pop-oriented songs rather than traditional blues and jazz songs. Along with a string of other hits, she followed this with a new version of the 1952 hit for Nat 'King' Cole, "Unforgettable", which also sold well, reaching #17 Pop.
In 1960, she teamed up with another successful Mercury artist Brook Benton and the two had back-to-back top-10 hit duets: "Baby (You've Got What It Takes)" (U.S. #5) and "A Rockin' Good Way (To Mess Around and Fall In Love)" (U.S. #7). Both hit the top spot on the R & B chart, "Baby" staying there for 10 weeks. Dinah scored a third R&B chart-topper the same year when her version of "This Bitter Earth" went all the way, also reaching #24 in the Hot 100. Her last major hit was "September in the Rain", which reached #23 in the USA, #35 in the UK, and #5 in the US R&B chart. In 1992, her 30-year-old version of Noel Coward's "Mad About the Boy" became a minor hit in the UK after being used in a TV commercial. These later recordings were supervised by Mercury's in-house producer in New York City, Clyde Otis, who also produced Benton's long run of hits.
By mid-1962, Washington's solo records had stopped selling as well, scoring low positions (anywhere from 70 to the 90s) on the Billboard top 100 of that year. Considering that chart success was more difficult to grasp than before, she made the move to Roulette records. There she had a reasonable hit with the 2-sider "Where Are You" and "You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You," but the records continued their low-scoring trend after that.
Dinah was well known for singing torch songs.[7] Her rendition of the popular standard "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" was well regarded. A 40-song box set of the same name was released in 1999.[8]
[edit] Selective awards and recognitions
[edit] Grammy Award
| Year | Category | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1959 | Best Rhythm & Blues Performance | What a Diff'rence a Day Made | R&B |
[edit] Grammy Hall of Fame
Recordings by Dinah Washington were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."[9]
| Year | Title | Genre | Label | Year Inducted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1959 | Unforgettable | Pop (Single) | Mercury | 2001 |
| 1954 | Teach Me Tonight | R&B (Single) | Mercury | 1999 |
| 1959 | What a Diff'rence a Day Makes | Traditional Pop (Single) | Mercury | 1998 |
[edit] Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed a song of Dinah Washington as one of the 500 songs that shaped rock.[10]
| Year Recorded | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|
| 1948 | Am I Asking Too Much? | R&B |
[edit] Honors and Inductions
- In 1993, the U.S. Post Office issued a Dinah Washington 29 cent commemorative postage stamp.
- In 2008, the city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Washington's birthplace, renamed the section of 30th Avenue between 15th Street and Kaulton Park "Dinah Washington Avenue."[11] The unveiling ceremony for the new name took place on March 12, 2009, with Washington's son Robert Grayson and three of her grandchildren, Tracy Jones, Tera Jones, and Bobby Hill Jr., in attendance. [12]
| Year | Title | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1993 | Rock and Roll Hall of Fame | Inducted | Early Influences |
| 1984 | Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame | Inducted | |
[edit] Queen of the Blues
Washington was married seven times in the U.S., with an eighth wedding performed in Stockholm, Sweden[citation needed], and divorced six times while having several lovers, including Quincy Jones)[citation needed], her young arranger. The legend that she wore mink in all weathers was debunked,[13] but the one that she carried two .45-caliber pistols with her still circulates unchallenged. Although she had a reputation as imperious and demanding, many found her loving, funny, generous and forgiving[citation needed]. Audiences sensed this remarkable combination of qualities and loved her. In London she once declared, "...there is only one heaven, one earth and one queen...Queen Elizabeth is an impostor"; the crowd loved it.[citation needed]
[edit] Death
A little over six months after her July 2, 1963 marriage to football star Dick "Night Train" Lane, on December 14, 1963, sadly Lane found his wife dead in their home. Dinah Washington was only 39. She died from an accidental overdose of prescription sleeping medication; there was little or no alcohol found in her blood on autopsy. Washington, who was 5'2" (1.58 m) tall and had fought weight problems most of her life, was fasting and taking diuretics (drug that elevates the rate of urination) to lose weight before a New Year's Eve party. She ingested the sleeping pills on an empty stomach; had she eaten something that day, she may not have died. Dinah Washington was buried in the historic Burr Oak Cemetery, in Alsip, Illinois. Sadly, it was at Burr Oak Cemetery in Illinois, that in July 2009 scandal hit the small cemetery, when its caretaker management and groundskeepers were arrested for desecrating its older graves, for illegal resales. Washington's final resting place was not affected.
[edit] Legacies
In 2007, R&B platinum-selling singer Deborah Cox reinterpreted the classic songs of Dinah Washington on her fourth album Destination Moon.
A recent surge in popularity in 2008 can be credited to a promo being run by Doubletree Hotels which features "Relax Max", a catchy tune from The Swingin' Miss "D" album. Also in 2008, "Backwater Blues" and "A Rockin' Good Way (To Mess Around And Fall In Love)" were included on the Nights in Rodanthe Original Motion Picture Soundtrack.
[edit] Discography
[edit] Albums
- 1950: Dinah Washington Songs
- 1952: Blazing Ballads
- 1952: Dynamic Dinah
- 1953: After Hours with Miss "D"
- 1954: Jazz Sides
- 1954: Dinah Jams
- 1956: In the Land of Hi-Fi
- 1956: Dinah!
- 1956: The Swingin' Miss "D"
- 1957: Dinah Washington Sings Bessie Smith
- 1957: Dinah Washington Sings Fats Waller
- 1957: Music for a First Love
- 1957: Music for Late Hours
- 1958: Newport (1958)
- 1959: The Queen
- 1959: What a Diff'rence a Day Makes!
- 1960: Two of Us
- 1962: In Love
- 1962: Dinah '62
- 1963: Back to the Blues
- 1963: Dinah '63
[edit] Singles
| Year | Song | Peak chart positions | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US | US R&B | UK | ||
| 1944 | "Evil Gal Blues" | 9 | ||
| 1948 | "Am I Asking Too Much" | 1 | ||
| "West Side Baby" | 7 | |||
| 1949 | "Baby Get Lost" | 1 | ||
| "Good Daddy Blues" | 9 | |||
| "Long John Blues" | 3 | |||
| 1950 | "I Only Know" | 3 | ||
| "I Wanna Be Loved" | 22 | |||
| 1954 | "Dream" | 9 | ||
| 1955 | "I Concentrate on You" | 11 | ||
| "I Diddie" | 14 | |||
| "If It's the Last Thing I Do" | 13 | |||
| "That's All I Want from You" | 8 | |||
| "You Might Have Told Me" | 14 | |||
| 1956 | "I'm Lost Without You Tonight" | 13 | ||
| "Soft Winds" | 13 | |||
| 1958 | "Make Me a Present of You" | 27 | ||
| 1959 | "What a Difference a Day Made" | 8 | 4 | |
| "Unforgettable" | 17 | 15 | ||
| 1960 | "Baby (You've Got What It Takes)" (w/ Brook Benton) | 5 | 1 | |
| "A Rockin' Good Way (To Mess Around and Fall in Love)" (w/ Brook Benton) | 7 | 1 | ||
| "This Bitter Earth" | 24 | 1 | ||
| "Love Walked In" | 30 | 16 | ||
| 1961 | "September in the Rain" | 23 | 5 | 35 |
| 1962 | "Cold, Cold Heart" | 96 | ||
| "Dream" | 92 | |||
| "I Want to Be Loved" (new version of 1950 hit) | 76 | |||
| "Where Are You" | 36 | |||
| "You're a Sweetheart" | 98 | |||
| "You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You" | 87 | |||
| 1963 | "Soulville" | 92 | ||
| 1992 | "Mad About the Boy" | 41 | ||
[edit] Other notable recordings
- "But Not For Me - 2:24
- "A Stranger On Earth" (1964)
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ 'Dinah the Queen'
- ^ 'Documentarist Ken Burns takes on jazz'
- ^ Dinah Washington Biography'
- ^ '"Queen of Soul" Aretha Franklin'
- ^ 'One of the best singers ever, Aretha Franklin!'
- ^ Bogdanov et al. All Music Guide to the Blues: The Definitive Guide to the Blues p. 373. Backbeat Books. ISBN 0879307366
- ^ New York Times. April 7, 1998. Peter Marks. Theater Review: Queen Of Blues Is Royally Annoyed With Life
- ^ Barnes & Noble. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Best of Dinah Washington
- ^ Grammy Hall of Fame Database
- ^ 500 Songs That Shaped Rock
- ^ "Odetta should be memorialized" The Tuscaloosa News, Monday, December 8, 2008
- ^ "Sign links singer with local roots" by Bebe Barefoot Lloyd, The Tuscaloosa News, Friday, March 13, 2009
- ^ During a performance at New York City's Knickerbocker Bar and Grill in November of 2008, in response to a patron's question about this particular lore, Junior Mance, who worked as Washington's pianist during the mid-1950s, refuted this claim.
[edit] Further reading
- Queen of the Blues: A Biography of Dinah Washington, Jim Haskins, 1987, William Morrow & Co. ISBN 0-688-04846-3
- Top Pop Records 1955-1972, Joel Whitburn, 1973, Record Research.
[edit] External links
- Dinah Washington's Gravesite
- Dinah The Queen (Biography, published by Random House)
