The women's movement began with Dinah Washington's voice. If Billie Holiday sang about mistreatment and the blues, Ella Fitzgerald sang youthful swing and Sarah Vaughan elegantly covered jazz-pop, Washington captured the sound of women demanding to be heard and treated well—or else. Her voice in the 1950s was sharp and powerful, like a trumpet or a sudden smack in the face. [Publicity still above of Dinah Washington]
While Washington sang blues, pop and just about everything else, it was her articulation and phrasing that reverberated with gritty strength and a warning that she wasn't to be messed with. That edge was baked into nearly every one of her songs. While Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Big Mama Thornton were plenty tough, they didn't cross over to enjoy the same kind of mainstream popularity as Washington
Today is the 100th anniversary of Washington's birth. The Queen of the Jukebox, as she was known, was born in Alabama in 1924 and grew up in Chicago. She died in Detroit in December 1963 of a fatal combination of secobarbital and amobarbital, prescriptions she took for insomnia and to keep her weight down. She was 39.
Over the course of her relatively short career, Washington was at a deficit, visually. She was short, wore wigs and was plump just as tall and lithe was in vogue in magazine and TV ads. When she sang, all of that pain and anxiety was channeled into a playfully wicked way of telling a song's story. The result was both aching, arch and upbeat. Ultimately, what you hear in Washington's voice is pure fearlessness. She influenced dozens of future female singers, whether they know it or not.
To set the stage for the documentary that I'm featuring, here's Bargain Day from The Swingin' Miss "D". Dig Washington's slow burn on this blues...
Here's Make Someone Happy. Dig how she swings this tune from the musical Do Re Mi and how she treats the lyrics—talk-singing in places as if delivering advice and giving it her all in others...
And here's her isolated vocal track on September in the Rain...
Today, in celebration of Dinah Washington's centenary, here's Evil Gal Blues, a terrific hour-long documentary...
