neveronfriday
May 15 2004, 11:17 AM
Next to BFT # 11, I've been, once again, blasting
Dinah Washington through my apartment.
Man, what a voice. On my favorite album,
Dinah Washington. The Best in Blues. Verve Elite Edition, 1997, there is just one damn fine track after another.
Trouble in Mind (with Jimmy Cobb's orchestra, including Ben Webster, Wardell Gray and Wynton Kelly),
New Blowtop Blues (including Paul Quinichette and, again, Wynton Kelly, plus Freddie Green on guitar), and the tracks with Teddy Stewart's orchestra ... whenever I listen to these, despite the obvious blues tinge, the sun comes out. Spectacular, just spectacular.
Anyone else seeing the sun whenever that voice lifts off from the speakers?
neveronfriday
May 15 2004, 11:25 AM
from the Verve site, a short bio:
| QUOTE |
Dinah Washington
Born Ruth Jones in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in August 1924, Dinah Washington moved to Chicago’s South Side when she was three or four. Her mother played piano at St. Luke’s Baptist Church, passing along her keyboard prowess to her young offspring. Spirituals comprised much of her initial focus; she hooked up with gospel pioneer Sallie Martin in 1940, hitting the road for a time as her accompanist. Yet secular pursuits had long intrigued her. Before joining Martin, the young singer had copped first prize at a Regal Theater amateur contest.
Whether it was bandleader Lionel Hampton, booking agent Joe Glaser, or Garrick Stage Bar boss Joe Sherman who gave Ruth the memorable stage handle of Dinah Washington, there’s no disputing her steady rise to stardom. A featured billing the Garrick led Hampton to hire her to sing with his big band in 1943.
Jazz critic Leonard Feather caught her with the Hampton band that December at Harlem’s Apollo and convinced Keynote Records to sponsor her debut session, but recording opportunities proved scarce while she was in Hampton’s employ. Before year’s end, Washington bid Hampton adieu, recording three Los Angeles sessions for the Apollo label under her own name before signing with the then-fledgling Mercury. She cut her first date for Mercury in January 1946, and by the summer of ’48 her solo star was in rapid ascension.
At the same time, Washington was interacting with some serious jazz royalty. She recorded with trumpeters Clifford Brown and Clark Terry, drummer Max Roach, and saxophonists Lockjaw Davis and Cannonball Adderley in the mid-Fifties, utilized Quincy Jones’s budding talents as an arranger, and employed pianist Wynton Kelly, drummer Jimmy Cobb, and tenor saxophonist Eddie Chamblee in her combo for extended stretches. (Chamblee was also one of her many husbands.)
Finally, in 1959, Dinah Washington made the full-fledged leap to pop stardom, thanks to the lovely Belford Hendricks-arranged ballad "What a Diff’rence a Day Makes". Under a&r man Clyde Otis’s market-savvy direction, she mined more pop gold with the stately "Unforgettable" and "This Bitter Earth". It was Otis’s brainstorm to pair Washington with her deep-voiced label mate Brook Benton; their seemingly playful duet "Baby, You Got What It Takes" masked serious tension between the two, but the end result was a giant pop and r&b hit in 1960.
An unintentional but lethal combination of alcohol and pills forever stilled Dinah Washington’s magnificent voice in Detroit on December 14, 1963. She was only thirty-nine.
Bill Dahl
Excerpted from Dinah Washington’s Finest Hour |
John L
May 15 2004, 11:26 AM
Dinah is a regular part of my diet, one of my very favorite jazz vocalists. I listen to her much more often than to Sarah or Ella, for example.
I agree that the "Best in Blues" album is excellent. I also really love her early recordings on Apollo with Lucky Thompson, Milt Jackson, Charles Mingus et al.
Quite a bit her huge output for Mercury was stellar.
brownie
May 15 2004, 11:40 AM
Dinah, the Queen! Oh yeah!
I bought all those Complete Mercury CDs, the whole lot of them, when they came out a decade
ago. Could not get enough of those.
I was an instant Dinah fan the moment I heard the 'Dinah Jams' album on EmArcy (with Clifford Brown,
Clark Terry, Maynard Ferguson et al) long time ago. Still get giant kicks out of this music.
neveronfriday
May 15 2004, 11:44 AM
| QUOTE (brownie @ May 15 2004, 06:40 PM) |
Dinah, the Queen! Oh yeah!
I bought all those Complete Mercury CDs, the whole lot of them, when they came out a decade
ago. Could not get enough of those. |
Guy,
can you tell me more about these? I don't have them. I actually have very few CDs, maybe 5 or 6, but she's top-of-the-shopping list material.
Cheers!
neveronfriday
May 15 2004, 12:00 PM
I just did some research. I'll start going for these once I have the cash. Numbers 01 and 05 are available at the moment. maybe ... or not ... or ... damn, I don't have the cash.
neveronfriday
May 15 2004, 12:10 PM
OK.
Sacrilege.
I want these. They cost an arm and a leg. I'm looking for an, err, friend, who, err, can, err, replicate, err, and then, err, trade, err, ...
Do I get thrown off the board now?
*hugs & kisses"
ghost of miles
May 15 2004, 12:25 PM
I've been listening to a lot of Dinah on Mercury lately--THE SWINGIN' MISS D and DINAH in particular. BMG just picked up AFTER HOURS WITH MISS D, so I'm hoping to get that one as well. Her jazz/blues/torch mix just sounds so right!
Alec
May 15 2004, 12:35 PM
Add me to the list of those who enjoy Ms. Washington. I too bought the Mercury Series and love it.
I know that there are those who bemoan her "commercial" sides, and to them I say "Plffffft".
neveronfriday
May 15 2004, 12:57 PM
| QUOTE (Claypone @ May 15 2004, 07:35 PM) |
| I know that there are those who bemoan her "commercial" sides, and to them I say "Plffffft". |
With a voice like that, it don't matter.
Am listening to "Drummer Man" again.
Been in my top ten of faves forever.
I never get tired of it.
But then again, I'm a drummer.
"[...] he's not only a wizard with his drumming sticks,
he's not only a wizard with his drumming sticks,
he also knows a lot of other clever tricks."
Cheers!
danasgoodstuff
May 15 2004, 01:53 PM
Count me among those who love Miss D. Who was it said 'she makes most of the others sound like little girls'? (and not just when she sang stuff like "he thrills me when he drills me", hey it's about her dentist...yeah, right). Love that, like Elvis and Ray, she "sang all kinds".
JSngry
May 15 2004, 08:53 PM
An pretty convincing argument could be made that the post WWII concept of "Soul Music", that genre-ignoring blend of Gospel, R&B, and Jazz, either began w/Dinah, or at least that she was one of the very first to purvey the message.
Did she EVER sing anything that sounded less than natural?
wolff
May 15 2004, 09:48 PM
I'm embarassed to say I have zero Dinah Washington on my shelves.
Every time I hear her I say to myself, "I need to get that".
What are the records where she is accomanied by a small group?
ghost of miles
May 29 2004, 01:31 PM
Wolff, the recently-reissued VME AFTER HOURS WITH MISS D is one small-group date. I just picked it up as a freebie through BMG.
Ya know, I picked up THE BEST IN BLUES about a year ago or so and just got around to listening to it today. I already have some of this material, but what a great compilation this CD is! Lately, when it comes to classic jazz singers, I find Dinah overtaking Billie in my listening habits... this may just be a reflection of the considerable time I've spent listening to Billie's entire catalogue, whereas I'm still discovering Dinah's album by album.
brownie
May 29 2004, 02:19 PM
There is a new biography of the Queen that is scheduled for publication in August, 'Queen, The Life And Music of Dinah Washington' by Nadine Cohodas. Is this supposed to be any good?
After reading negative reviews, I stayed away from the earlier biography by James Haskins!
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