Dinah Washington - First Issue: The Dinah Washington Story (The Original Recordings)

great collection

I'm new to this artist and found this collection wonderful! The sound quality is great and so is the variety of songs. February 25, 2008

In Her Heyday She Could Sing Anything

Born Ruth Jones on August 29, 1924 in rural Tuscaloosa, Alabama, she moved to Chicago at an early age and, after winning an amateur contest in 1939, took the name Dinah Washington in the early Forties when she joined Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra.

In 1944/45 she recorded on the Keynote label and made what was then known as the Harlem Hit Parade with Salty Papa Blues (# 10) and Evil Gal Blues (# 9) under the billing "Sextet with Dinah Washington" (the sextet was trumpeter Joe Morris, Rudy Rutherford on clarinet, Milt Buckner on piano, drummer Fred Radcliffe, Vernon King on bass and Arnette Cobbs on tenor sax).

After a two year absence from the charts, she returned on Mercury in 1948 with The Rudy Martin Trio and the classic Fats Waller composition Ain't Misbehavin (# 6 on the Most Played Juke Box Race Records charts) - unfortunately not in this set.

Thereafter Dinah was seldom off any charts (1957 being the sole exception) right through to the year of her death at age 39 (December 14, 1963), during which time she had just over 60 hits.

In this compilation you get 23 of them, including a cover of a pure Country song, the Hank Snow classic I Don't Hurt Anymore which went to # 3 R&B in 1954 (she also took Hank Williams Cold, Cold Heart to # 3 R&B in 1951 but, alas, that too is missing).

All of her biggest Mercury pop crossovers are here, however, including I Wanna Be Loved (# 5 R&B/# 22 pop in 1950 with the Teddy Stewart orchestra), What A Difference A Day Makes (# 4 R&B/# 8 pop), and Unforgettable (# 15 R&B/# 17 pop) - both in 1959, the 1960 duets with Brook Benton, Baby (You've Got What It Takes) and A Rockin' Good Way (To Mess Around And Fall In Love) which both went to # 1 R&B and nos. 5 and 7 respectively on the Billboard Pop Hot 100, my all-time favorite, the sad This Bitter Earth which peaked at # 1 R&B/# 24 Hot 100 in August 1960, Love Walked In (# 16 R&B/# 30 Hot 100 in November 1960), and 1961's lilting September In The Rain (# 5 R&B/# 23 Hot 100).

After four more lower region pop hits in 1960/61, Dinah moved to Roulette Records in 1962 and that year added six Hot 100 entries, although only one made the Pop Top 40, and none scored on the R&B charts as her voice had lost much of its quality by this time.

Dinah Washington is, simply put, one of the all-time greats, and this was acknowledged by the R&R Hall Of Fame, which inducted her in 1993 in the "early influence" category, the U.S. Postal Service who honored her that same year with a stamp (depicted on the CD cover), and the Blues Hall Of Fame in 2003. Inside this package you also get a wonderful booklet written by the noted music historian Chris Albertson which highlights her career and details of each of the 46 selections.
September 13, 2007

You know damn well I can't read!

Dinah Washington was known as "The Queen of the Blues", but she was also equally adept at singing jazz, R&B and pop. She recorded a lot of music during her relatively short life, and this 2 CD set features 2 and a half hours of some of her best work. There is one unlisted bonus track at the end, which is Dinah telling a joke about a talking dog. August 31, 2007

the queen of the blues reigns supreme

this is a personal go-to collection of dinah washington recordings. they cover the gamut of her career from gutsy bluesy early stuffs to commercialized arrangements for standards that were redeemed by her uniqe style and phrasing.

i'm sure that if a person reads the other reviews, they'll get biographical info, more detailed analyses of her phrasings and the arrangements and breakdowns of the studios that recorded her. all i know is what i feel. and this woman's voice makes me feel so good! i love the pop stuff, i love when she swings it, i love when she holds back and i love it most when her phrasing is so relaxed that it's like she's talking to the listener, especially on 'mad about the boy'.

and i love that corny joke at the end! May 10, 2007

Don't Forget the Queen of the Blues and Jazz and more

How can there be people who do not own these recordings. How can people live without Dinah. She was special. From the first blues sides she cut with the men from Hamp's band in the forties, to her last effort, there is a deeply African American blues and church based depth to her, but something personal, so totally real, so totally of her own,bitter sometimes, sweet rarely, moving always to her singing.

In these recordings we see a great range of Dinah. She's doing R & B (TV is the thing this year), Torch songs, she singing Jazz and even playing vibes with ace Jazz Musicians, she is cutting through oceans of strings on What a Difference a Day Makes, she is all over. There are so many shining gems on this record, there is so much lost that music is so categorized that you cannot have a Diva like Dinah today who the Jazzbos call their own, whom the blues singers must tip their hats to, who provides the slow song to make your move for the dancers, and who is a star even for the squares listening to MOR--does that exist any more middle of the road radio?

I'm convinced that when John Hammond first produced Aretha Franklin as a Jazz-Blues artist before Jerry Wexler took her to soul, that Hammond thought he was trying to create a Dinah Washington.

I do not think a single artist has come along since she left us to fill those voids. No one with all that soul! February 10, 2004

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