Baby Washington

One of the most beloved vocalists of the past century, Dinah Washington (1924-1963) was justly celebrated for her very personal singing style that was at home in all types of music, be it blues, jazz, R&B or pop. In this respect, she was gifted with an unmistakable salty, high-pitched voice that was perfect for her complete clarity of fiction and her phrasing with strong roots in the blues. An artist who led a very turbulent personal life, Dinah Washington was known for her no-nonsense, unsentimental, yet always moving renditions centred on the universal subject of lost love.

Dinah Washington is one of the all-time great jazz singers, and she staked that claim with a whole lot of blues in her delivery. This roundup of blues-heavy sides from her Mercury heyday, then, is a welcome addition to an already impressive catalog. Cut during the '50s and early '60s, the 16 tracks include such usual suspects as "Trouble in Mind," "You Don't' Know What Love Is," and Bessie Smith's classic "Backwater Blues." Nicely augmenting these fine renditions, Washington transforms pop numbers like "Since I Fell for You" and "Soft Winds" with some juke-joint heat. And with plenty more gems to be had and fine support from arranger Quincy Jones, tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson, trombonist Jimmy Cleveland, drummer Max Roach, and many others, one can't lose gettin' real lowdown with the swingin' (and bluesy) "Miss D."

In the late 1950s and early 1960s R&B stood for ‘rhythm and blues’ - a term associated with some of the most joyous and vibrant popular music ever made. More diverse than the blues, R&B was basically the forerunner of Soul music, and the black equivalent of rock ‘n’ roll: instrumentally energetic, with superb vocals delivered by heartfelt voices that had (mostly) learned to sing in gospel choirs. This 40-track compilation is a combination of well-known hits and real obscurities, but it’s all solidly good stuff. All in all, you’ll certainly find more than enough in this compilation to set those good times rolling again.

One of the easiest jobs in music has to be producer of a Little Joe Washington album. Make sure he shows up at the studio - itself no small feat, though not as difficult as it used to be - turn on the recording equipment and get out of the way. On his second album for Austin's Dialtone Records (following 2003's Houston Guitar Blues), the blues flows so effortlessly out of Washington's guitar it's hard to believe any of these 15 songs needed more than one take….

Dinah Washington was accompanied by an orchestra organized and conducted by Quincy Jones on this 1957 album, and she was singing to arrangements mostly written by the young bandleader, swing charts of pop standards by the likes of Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and Duke Ellington. The result had much in common with the swing albums of Frank Sinatra in the same period, especially because Jones' arrangements were heavily influenced by Billy May and Nelson Riddle. Sinatra's records were regarded as "pop, " of course, and Washington's, at least when released on the EmArcy subsidiary of Mercury Records, as "jazz, " but her precise articulation and attention to lyrical meaning left little room for improvisation, and while Jones allowed for brief solos from a band that included Charlie Shavers, Clark Terry, Urbie Green, and Milt Hinton, the jazz categorization was actually arbitrary…