Rock & Roll Books

Queen: The Life and Music of Dinah Washington

Pantheon Books, 523 pp., $24.95

Dinah Washington had a way with songs. That bittersweet, clarion voice, grounded in gospel, was ideally suited for blues, R&B, pop, and even rock & roll. Her instinctive interpretive skills were a natural for jazz and allowed her to turn ballads and pop pablum into gems of soulful expression. The triumvirate of Billie, Ella, and Sarah may occupy the upper echelons of female jazz singers, but Dinah (as she was commonly referred to) was right there with them. The title "Queen of the Blues" came early in her career, but the more fitting "Queen of the Jukeboxes" reflected the fact that she was the most popular black female vocalist of the 1950s. Queen is a painstakingly researched bio by Nadine Cohodas, who's also written about Chess Records. She's certainly thorough in tracing how Ruth Jones worked her way from being a child gospel singer in Chicago to the heights of pop stardom as Dinah Washington. Cohodas catalogs every gig in every city for every year, complete with more than 60 pages of exhaustive footnotes, extensive quotes from trade publications like Billboard and Cash Box, and a complete discography. What's lacking amid the endless facts is the human side of Washington. Her huge artistry aside, the singer had a flamboyant, obsessive personality and lived an extraordinarily colorful life replete with seven husbands, the last of whom was Austin-born football star Dick "Night Train" Lane. More first-person recollections of her life and especially her career would've enlivened this book – not gossip, but rather more oral history from musicians, record executives, club owners, fans, and family to help fill the gaps between the facts. As it stands, there's more than enough evidence to see that Dinah Washington truly was "The Queen."