Born Ruth Lee Jones in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Dinah Washington grew up in Chicago, where she sang and played the piano in a Baptist church.
After winning a talent contest she joined the big band of Lionel Hampton in 1943, and her bruising, insouciant delivery drew immediate attention.
She signed with Mercury Records in 1947, beginning a 15-year association marked by Washington’s ease with a panoply of musical styles.
A yearly series of hits established her as the top female rhythm and blues artist during the first half of the 50s.
Washington was actually the most versatile and influential singer of the 1950s. She was as comfortable with swinging jazz as she was with pop, show tunes or down and dirty rhythm and blues.
Hits such as I Won’t Cry Anymore, Trouble In Mind, I Don’t Hurt Anymore and Teach Me Tonight influenced a new generation of divas, including Etta James and Aretha Franklin.
Dinah had to wait until 1959 to score a pop-chart crossover hit, with the sublime What A Diff’rence A Day Makes.
More pop hits followed over the next three years: Unforgettable, September In The Rain, This Bitter Earth and her successful duets with Brook Benton, Baby (You’ve Got What It Takes) and A Rockin’ Good Way (To Mess Around and Fall In Love).
She may have been called ‘The Queen of the Blues’, but Dinah Washington’s immense talent cannot be pigeon-holed.
Her nickname was true in that everything she touched shared the emotion and sincerity of the blues.
Dinah Washington died in 1963 after accidentally combining alcohol and sleeping pills. She was just 37.
She was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 1993.
Related Posts
Staple Singers, The The Staple Singers were truly a family. Originally composed of Roebuck 'Pops' Staples – "our name is Staples but we…
Brook Benton Born Benjamin Franklin Peay in Lugoff, South Carolina, in 1931, Benton - the son of a Methodist preacher - began…
Chi-Lites, The In the late 50s, Eugene Record and Robert 'Squirrel' Lester were performing in a singing group called The Chanteurs, while…
Ruth Brown Born in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1928, Ruth Brown (real name Ruth Alston Weston) won an amateur night competition at Harlem's Apollo…
Rufus Thomas Born on 26 March 1917 in Cayce, Mississippi, Rufus Thomas first hit the stage as a dancer and comedian with…
Johnny Nash Born on 19 August 1940, in Houston, Texas, John Lester Nash, Jr was one of the first black entertainers to…
Ral Donner Ralph Stuart Emanuel Donner was born in Norwood Park, Chicago and sang in church as a child. He sang in…
LaVern Baker Chicago-native LaVern Baker (born Delores Williams on 11 November 1929) was a well-built and undeniably sexy black girl who learnt…
