<Archive Obituary> Dinah Washington (December 14th 1963)
Bill Schenley
Box of Pills Near Her Bed Prompts Autopsy in Detroit
Entertainer, 39, Was Wife of Football Star Dick Lane
Sang in Church Choir
24 LP Records Listed
Photo: http://usuarios.lycos.es/helenawtry/dinah.jpg
FROM: The New York Times (December 15th 1963) ~
By The Associated Press
DETROIT, Mich. Dec. 14
Dinah Washington, the Negro blues singer, died today
at her home here.
Miss Washington, who was 39 years old, was the wife
of Dick (Night Train) Lane, a star halfback for the Detroit
Lions football team.
The police said Miss Washington might have accidentally
taken an overdose of a sedative. There was a box of pills
beside her bed.
An autopsy was ordered to determine the cause of death.
Miss Washington's family had planned a Christmas
holidays reunion.
Her two sons by previous marriages, George Jenkins, 18,
and Robert Grayson, 15, had just come home from Boston
where they attend a preparatory school.
Mr. Lane, 35, stayed at home as the Lions departed for their
National Football League game with the Chicago Bears in
Chicago tomorrow. The game will help decide whether
Chicago wins the championship of the league's Western
Division.
Mr. Lane accompanied the police to the Wayne County
Morgue. A police sergeant described him as "shaken but
composed."
Miss Washington's career spanned nearly 20 years. She
recorded many hits, starred in television and was a favorite in
night clubs.
Mr. Lane was her seventh husband. They married last July.
He had been married once before.
The couple had watched television last night after arriving
home from Detroit Metropolitan Airport with her two sons.
Mr. Lane said the buzzing of their bedroom television set
awakened him about 3:45 A.M. and he found his wife
unconscious. A doctor who was summoned pronounced
her dead.
A box of orange and blue pills was found next to the bed.
The police said it was apparently a prescription from a West
Coast druggist. Miss Washington recently returned from
singing engagements there.
She had taken pills for a nervous condition, friends said.
Shirley Couch, her secretary, said Miss Washington had
been in good spirits.
"From all appearances she was very, very happy," Miss
Couch said.
Miss Washington reached stardom in the early nineteen-forties
with her recordings of "Blow Top Blues" and "Evil Gal Blues."
Her recording of "What a Difference a Day Makes" was said to
have topped a million in sales, and her income was said to
have reached as high as $150,000 a year.
Sang in Church Choir
Miss Washington was born Ruth Jones in Tuscaloosa, Ala.,
Aug. 8, 1924, and moved to Chicago as a young girl. There
she became immersed in religious music, playing piano for a
church choir.
She won an amateur singing contest at Chicago's Regal
Theater at the age of 15. In 1942, she opened at the Garrick
Bar, where Joe Glaser, then head of a booking agency, heard her.
Mr. Glaser persuaded her to change her name to Dinah
Washington and got her a job with Lionel Hampton.
By the time she left the Hampton band in 1946, she had
established herself, in the words of Leonard Feather, author of
the Encyclopedia of Jazz, as "probably the most important new
rhythm and blues recording star of the decade." Mr. Feather
declared:
"Her gutty, forthright blues style, combining jazz qualities with
more than a hint of her religious singing background, was later
applied to pop and standard tunes, which extended her renown
far beyond the rhythm and blues field."
Some of Miss Washington's more popular recordings were
"What a Difference a Day Makes," "Evil Gal Blues," "I Know
How to Do It," "Homeward Bound," "Salty Papa," "Mad About
the Boy," "Stormy Weather," "September in the Rain," "I Won't
Cry Anymore" and "Harbor Lights."
Miss Washington had been married six times when she met
Mr. Lane, a long-time fixture with the Lions and an All-Pro
selection the last three years. They were married in Las Vegas
last July 2.
Miss Washington had just returned from a West Coast tour,
during which she played four weeks in Las Vegas and two
weeks in Los Angeles.
24 LP Records Listed
Miss Washington had 24 LP records listed in the current
catalogues. She recorded on the Mercury and Roulette labels.
Critics differed in appraising her performance.
John S. Wilson of the New York Times regarded her as a pop
singer who worked in an area that fringed on jazz. He noted that
her background was in rhythm and blues but did not consider
her a jazz singer.
Other critics called attention to her distinctive style of
"barking songs out" a few words at a time.
There was general agreement, however, that she had a rather
large and loyal audience.
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Photos: http://www.edelmangallery.com/leonard26s.jpg
http://www.nndb.com/people/095/000023026/dw-1-sized.jpg
http://www.andrewsmithgallery.com/images/leonard_jazz_port/vol_three10.jpg
Dinah Washington in art: http://www.alamhof.org/iwashing.jpg
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/articles/washingtondinah11624x30singing.jpg