Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Dinah Washington was born Ruth Lee Jones on August 29, 1924 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. A blues, R&B and jazz singer, Dinah gained an early reputation for singing torch songs. In 1962 she hired a trio of musicians and vocalists that called themselves the Allegros, consisting of Jimmy Thomas on drums, Earl Edwards on sax, and Jimmy Sigler on organ and their vocals created “effective choruses”.

Garnering the title “Queen of the Blues”, over the course of her career Dinah recorded for Keynote, Mercury, EmArcy and Roulette Records, winning a Grammy for “What A Difference A Day Makes”. She was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, with her recordings inducted into the Grammy, Big Band, Jazz and the Rock and Roll Halls of Fame. She had a U.S. Postal commemorative stamp; had a street in Tuscaloosa and a park in Chicago named in her honor.

Known for her amorous personality, Washington was married eight times and divorced seven times, while having several lovers in between marriages. However, it was very early on the morning of December 14, 1963, that Dinah Washington passed away from a lethal combination of secobarbital and amobarbital. Her eighth and final husband NFL player Dick “Night Train” Lane discovered her body. She was 39.

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