Queen : The Life and Music of Dinah Washington

Rating:
Summary: A fine insider's guide to the real Dinah
Review:
Born Ruth Lee Jones in 1924 in Alabama, singer Dinah Washington's family moved to Chicago where she became a local gospel star at fifteen - but she didn't stop there. When she was discovered by Lionel Hampton at eighteen, Dinah made her way to New York's Apollo Theatre and became a legend. Queen: The Life And Music Of Dinah Washington reviews her life and music, delving into her high and low moments alike. A fine insider's guide to the real Dinah.



Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary woman, ordinary bio
Review: Dinah Washington straddled all forms of pop music successfully and also was a wild woman, tearing through men at an exhaustive rate. However, this book is like trying to swim in quicksand, trying to get to insights about the music and the juicy adventures of this legendary artist.

Rating:
Summary: Street Peddler Appraises Gem
Review: Dinah Washington was a great human being as well as a great singer. Cohodas is an incompetent writer whose lack of writing skills is exceeded only by her lack of insight. I gave the book one star for the excellent cover -- which Dinah would have loved. If you want an accurate appraisal of a gem, take it to a jeweler not to a street peddler.

Dinah's biography has yet to be written. Given her magnificent talent and complex personality, only a highly skilled writer capable of penetrating social and psychological insights and access to personal materials could craft a biography worthy of her. Someone of the caliber of Toni Morrison, or Maya Angelou at her best, could do her justice. Until then, the light of Dinah's talents, generosity and love will continue to shine upon the earth bestowed - solo - by the Queen.

Rating:
Summary: Still Waiting for the Definitive Bio...
Review: Dinah Washington, like Etta James and Esther Phillips, is one of the underrated singers of the post WWII era, and very little has been written about her. So when I saw this book and who its author was,(Nadine Cohodas, who wrote a superb history of Chess Records,Spinning Blues Into Gold), I eagerly anticipated reading it.
After finishing it, unfortunately I'm still waiting for the definitive biography of the Queen. It's very apparent that Cohodas did a lot of research, but the result was turned into a laundry list of club dates, recording sessions, clothes inventories, and rotating musicians and husbands which becomes numbing. What is missing is context and interpretation of these events aside from the repetitive assertion that Washington was narrowly promoted and marketed because of race. I wasn't looking for sensationalism or psychobiography from this book, but I was hoping to gain some insight into Dinah Washington's life, or music, and the lack of analysis left me still wondering both who she was and how she created such wonderful music.

Rating:
Summary: exhaustive and exhausting .....
Review: I couldn't agree more with the reviewer here who calls this biography "dry." "Queen" is an exhausting, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink look into the life and music of Dinah Washington. The pace is maddeningly slow - it's certainly not what I'd call a "page-turner" - and it is full of minute details but little insight. Informative, sure, but in the right hands all this detail could have been compiled into a book that is an enjoyment to read, not something that seemed ( for me, at least ) more like a homework assignment.

Rating:
Summary: It's only the music I love.
Review: I finished this book while listening to her multiple CD collections. The book gets five stars for its scholarship, its extensive notes, its all inclusive index.

But still it seems too cold for the subject at hand, or perhaps I'm just disappointed that Dinah Washington was more shallow than I imagined her to be. Probably the latter.

Also Cohodas's appraisal of the albums I enjoyed most is just the opposite of what I feel myself. What I hear as honest and tragic, the biography calls tired and too husky. And the other way around.

I had no idea that Dinah Washington did "It's Too Soon To Know" before Etta James (who owns the song in my estimation). Etta James came later, and she idolized Dinah Washington and made her sound her own, much as author William Gay has become a dopplinger of Cormac McCarthy's written voice.

When Etta James spotted Dinah Washington in the audience at the nightclub where she was singing, she abandoned her original program and sang "Unforgettable" as a tribute to her idol. The song was broken up by Dinah Washington screaming at her, pointing a finger at her saying, "Girl, don't you ever try to do the Queen's songs."

According to Cohodas, Dinah Washington's lovers, to whom she dedicated songs, were usually gone by the time the records were released. She was married seven times and had many lovers in-between. Such as the "Rafael" she mentions on Irving Berlin's "I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm."

Dinah was dead at thirty-nine, but her music lives on and always will for this listener. This biography reminds me again that Art is part the author and part the reader, part the singer and part the listener. What I hear in her music has not changed.

Rating:
Summary: Thorough But Dry
Review: This book is a little disappointing. I love Dinah Washington's voice and, knowing she'd led an interesting life, I thought this book might provide some insight into her music. Instead, the book is more of a laundry list of music charts, reviews, and musicians. I'd recommend the Sam Cooke biography, You Send Me, or the great Bob Marley bio, Catch a Fire instead.