Dinah Wa (August 29, 1924 - December 14, 1963) an American blues, jazz, and gospel singer. Because of her heavy voice & emotional singing, she is referred to as a "Queen of the Blues".

Wash. was natural Ruth Jones around Tuscaloosa, Alabama; her family moved to Chicago while she was still the toddler. When she was growing higher inside Chicago, she played piano and directed her church choir. Late, she exposed inside Walter Dyett's renowned music program at DuSable High School. Apatch, she split her period between performing witharound clubs when Dinah Wash. while & singing & swimming piano in Salle Martin's gospel choir when Ruth Jones. Her penetrating voice, first-class timing, & crystal-clear diction added her have distinctive style to each piece she undertook.

When making extraordinary recordings inside jazz, blues, R&B and light pop contexts, Washington refused to record gospel music despite her obvious talent in singing it. She believed it wrong to mix a laic & spiritual, & when she got entered a non-religious music globe professionally, she refused to include gospel within her repertoire.

Inland northwest began performing inside 1942 and soon joined Lionel Hampton's band. There exists a few dispute all about a origin of her title. A few sources say a manager of a Garrick Stage Bar gave her the title Dinah Wa; others say it was Hampton world health organization selected it.

Within 1943, she began recording for Keynote Records and released "Evil Gal Blues", her number 1 hit. By 1955, she had freed many hit songs on the R&B charts, including "Baby, Get Lost", "Trouble in Mind", "You Don't Know What Love Is" (arranged by Quincy Jones), and a cover of "Cold, Cold Heart" by Hank Williams. Within 1958 she made a easily-received appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival.

Sustaining "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes" 1959, Washington won the Grammy Award for Best Rhythm and Blues Performance; the song was her large hit, reaching #8 on the Billboard Hot 100. A commercially-caused album of the equivalent title, by owning its heavy reliance in strings & non-vocal choruses, wwhen slammed by jazz & blues critics as existence far as well commercial, non keeping by owning her blues roots. Despite this, the album was a vast profits & Inl& northwest continued to favor other commercial message, pop-oriented songs like than traditional blues and jazz songs. Along by having the string of more hits, she followed this by using "September In The Rain", which reached total 35 within the UK in November 1961 and #23 in the US. Around 1960, she also experienced deuce top Ten hit duets by having Brook Benton: "Baby (You've Got What It Takes)" & "A Rockin' Good Way (To Mess Around and Fall In Love)".

She was married septet days, & divorced sixfold when with many lovers, including Quincy Jones, her young arranger. She was known to become masterful & demanding inside realistic, however audiences loved her. Around London she when declared, "...there is only one heaven, one earth and one queen...[Queen] Elizabeth is an impostor", however a crowd loved it.

In the period of her marriage to football streaming video player Dick "Night Train" Lane, her voice was forever silenced by a fatal overdose of diet pills and alcohol at the age of 39 in 1963. She is interred in the Burr Oak Cemetery, Alsip, Illinois.

Samples
Download sample of "Mixed Emotions"