Take 5 With Dinah Washington

This week's Take 5 playlist is devoted to the great Dinah Washington who was known as the Queen of the Juke Boxes and Queen of the Blues. Influenced by Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and others, the former gospel singer first became a household name as a singer with Lionel Hampton. It was the beginning of a fabled career that we will sample in several playlists. Today's focus will be on some of her early recordings.

We open with "Evil Gal Blues" that was recorded while with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra.

Despite being called a blues singer, Dinah was so much more as can be heard in this early recording (1947) for the Mercury family of labels, "Embraceable You."

Nest up is "You Satisfy" which spent a week on the rhythm and Blues charts. It was written by Danny Baxter and originally recorded by Ruby Smith with Gene (Honeybear) Sedric and His Orchestra. Dinah would record it a couple years later, adding a verse from Billie Holiday's "Billie's Blues" as "Gambler's Blues." B.B. King recorded it as "Gambler's Blues," on his "Blues Is King" live album. Subsequently such blues artists as Otis Rush and Luther Allison recorded it as well.

Of course, Dinah was not averse to a double-entendre lyric. Here is her classic "Long John Blues."

We close this short playlist with a song about the second Petrillo Recording ban, "Record Ban Blues."

I look forward to presenting another playlist of this legend of Jazz and Blues in a week or two.