DINAH WASHINGTON: "What A Difference A Day Makes!" (+ 15 Bonus Tracks)

Original released on LP Mercury SR 60158

(US, 1959)

DINAH WASHINGTON '62

Original released on LP Roulette SR 25170

(US, 1962)

This album opens and closes with excellent drinking songs. That's appropriate, because the lounge is present all the way through this album. Sometimes, as in the case of the fore mentioned tunes it works to perfection. Other times, as in "You're Nobody Til Somebody Loves You", it's a little too much.  There is enough of it though, to make this a very good one to stick on when you're hosting a get together. Dinah of course is in fine, swinging form. The horns are blasting, and the cigarette smoke is almost there. If you are looking for a scene like that, which I do from time to time, this one works pretty well. (in RateYourMusic)

The Swingin' Miss "D" + Bonus

Original released on LP EmArcy MG 36104 (mono)

(US, January 1957)

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. Whatever musical genre you assign it to, however, this is an excellent Washington album. (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)