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Dinah Washington

Dinah Washington

Ruth Jones, daughter of Ollie Jones and Alice William, was born in in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in August 1924. Her parents moved the family to the South Side of Chicago when she was about three or four. Her mother played piano at St. Luke's Baptist Church, passing along her keyboard prowess to her young offspring. By age 11, Ruth Jones performed as a gospel vocalist and frequently appeared with her mother, her first music instructor, at church recitals across the country.

In 1938, when she was barely a teenager, she won a major talent contest at the Chicago's Regal Theater. At 15, after winning an amateur contest at the Regal Theatre, she began performing in nightclubs as a pianist and singer. Initially she focused on spirituals and eventually met gospel pioneer Sallie in 1940, who joined her tour as her accompanist. They performed at local clubs, including the Rhumboogie and the Down Beat Room.

At age 17 she got married the first time. Married life was challenging and she took on a job in the bathroom of the popular Garrick Bar. Soon she had the opportunity to sing the opening act, often singing with the house band led by trumpeter Walter Fuller.

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 and some claim that she was named by Garrick's stage boss, Joe Sherman.

She joined Hampton 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. Feather's "Evil Gal Blues" was to be her first hit. The records took off.

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 she didn't have much time on her own recordings, while she was in Hampton's employ. Hampton's contract with Decca solely required instrumental music, Washington recorded only one side during her three years with the orchestra.

Washington left Hampton and started 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 her solo star was in rapid ascension.

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). 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."

She sang the 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.

Dinah Washington's drug and alcohol problems grew worse. Between 1941 and her death at only 39 year's of age she married seven different husbands.

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."

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."

Washington would interact 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 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 seven 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 the market-savvy direction of Clyde Otis Dinah recorded gold albums including "Unforgettable" and "This Bitter Earth". It was Otis' 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 hit in 1960.

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.

In 1960 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, Koetzner added, "she closes with 'Me and My Gin,' and there's an ominous sense that's she's long been living the song."

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.

Unfortunately her drug and alcohol addictions led her didn't allow her to sleep very well. 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.

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.