[Dixielandjazz] Dinah Washington

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Just to demonstrate that the old ones (I refer to text not author)  are worth playing again, I copied a listmate's dateless comments from amazon.ca about the Dinah Washington.  


Whilst the blues were undoubtedly Dinah Washington's  Forté, it is still good to find her working with sophisticated material like these 10 
songs. They are quality standards, typical of the sort of material a jazz soloist might have  chosen at the time (1955) and far removed from the mawkish  material that was more often handed to her by the record  companies. She responds well and shows that the suggestion  that she wasn't a natural with ballads was unjust.  Additionally Mercury, for whom she recorded for a decade,  often surrounded her with quality jazz musicians, as they have  here. On some albums the soloists were given their head very  much at Washington's expense, but on these 1955 sessions they  are well handled by Quincy Jones in his coherent charts. The  result is one of the singer's best collections. The jazz  musicians, with the exception of the ubiquitous Clark Terry,  are like a group on a day out from the Home For Under-Recorded  Jazz Musicians--saxophonists Paul Quinichette and Cecil Payne,  trombonist Jimmy Cleveland, pianist Wynton Kelly,
 guitarist  Barry Galbraith, bassist Keeter Betts and drummer Jimmy Cobb.  They take mighty advantage of their chance in the spotlight. --Steve Voce
----------------------------------
All I can add is that some time ago an extremely sympatico non-listmate arrived for one of our regular lunches almost haloed, certainly glowing, and he is not much of a singers person -- his elevation had been performed by a CD of the same Ms. Vaughan and Mr. Terry in the company of among others, including Clifford Brown, whom the late Don Goldie declared to be the only satisfactory trumpeter to have emerged since 1945.  Asked if he really meant that, Mr. Goldie said, 'yes'!  


Robert R. Calder