"She could take the melody in her hand, hold it like an egg, crack it open, fry it, let it sizzle, reconstruct it, put the egg back in the box and back in the refrigerator and you would've still understood every single syllable." - Quincy Jones
Eighty-five years ago today the phenomenon that was Dinah Washington was born.
The former Ruth Jones took the music world by storm with her crystal clear, multi-range vocals - perfectly suited to jazz, blues, torch songs and big band music alike. She worked over the years with the top names in the industry, including Lionel Hampton, Louis Jordan, Brook Benton and the erstwhile Quincy Jones, and was certainly an influence on later artists like Aretha Franklin (and all other blues and soul artistes thereafter).
Remarkably, by the time of her accidental death in 1963 from an overdose of sleeping pills at the age of 39, she had already had seven husbands and recorded a back catalogue of fabulous music of which many artists would have been proud. One can only imagine what more delights Miss Washington would have given the world had she lived longer...
And of course, a record for which she is perhaps most famous these days (written by the Master, Noel Coward):
Dinah Washington on Wikipedia
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