Dinah Washington enjoyed great renown in her later years for her ballad singing and jazz stylings, as well as for her catchy pop/R&B duets with Brook Benton, but in her day she was hailed as the undisputed queen of the blues. Forty-five of her songs (including both sides of several singles) for Mercury Records made the Billboard charts between 1948 and 1961. Born Ruth Lee Jones on Aug. 29, 1924, she moved from her native Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to Chicago as a child and grew up singing gospel and playing piano in church, but in her teens she also sang blues in theaters and clubs. A club owner gave her the name Dinah Washington in 1942, and the next year her growing renown landed her a job as vocalist with the Lionel Hampton band. Her first recording, "Evil Gal Blues," made with the Hampton band, was a Top Ten hit in 1944. During her tenure with Mercury, she enjoyed five No. 1 R&B hits: "Baby, Get Lost," "Am I Asking Too Much," "This Bitter Earth," and two duets with Benton, "Baby (You’ve Got What It Takes)" and "A Rockin’ Good Way." Famed as much for her saucy stage presence and volatile love life as she was for her vocal sophistication, Dinah Washington died of an overdose of sleeping pills in Detroit on Dec. 14, 1963.
— Jim O’Neal
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