As Duke Ellington would have said, Dinah Washington was “beyond category”. Subtle and inventive enough to hold an honored place in the jazz pantheon yet tough and forceful enough to command the attention of blues, R&B and rock & roll audiences. Equally at ease performing Broadway songs, pop tunes or jazz material, Washington combined urbane finesse with down-home grit to make music that reflected her strong-willed, larger-than-life personality.

From a label with no shortage of first-rate jazz material come this very attractive vocal sampler. Staying true to the Compact Jazz ethos, Best of the Jazz Vocalists favors quality over hits and comes with a budget price tag. The majority of songs are from the label's prime '50s and '60s run, including a cloud-bound "Summertime" by Helen Merrill and one of the all-time great versions of "If You Could See Me Now," compliments of Billy Eckstine. Continuing with this balancing act between the sexes, the collection also includes fine work by Bill Henderson, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Abbey Lincoln, Jon Hendricks, Shirley Horn, and Anita O'Day; latter-day entries include Lincoln's "I've Got Thunder and It Rings" from her 1990 Verve debut and Horn's "I Got Lost in His Arms" from 1988's Close Enough for Love. Nicely wrapped up with Nina Simone's Afro-percussion clarion call "Come Ye," this Verve roundup works as the perfect primer for more adventurous trips through the label's fertile stores of essential jazz.

Dinah Washington cut a lot of sides in two decades of recording. However, her straight jazz sessions were few and far between because of the mass popular and commercial appeal that she had as a pop singer. Still, the versatile Dinah thrived in just about any setting and the one provided here in 1955 by the gifted Chicago producer Bob Shad showcases her intimate side to perfection.
Since Dinah Washington just about invented gospel-based soulful singing, it's thrilling to hear her at the peak of her powers backed by a small group that includes trumpeter Clark Terry and pianist Wynton Kelly. The session is also graced by Quincy Jones' tidy arrangements…

Dinah Washington's first solo recordings (with the exception of a session supervised by Lionel Hampton in 1943) are included on this Delmark repackaging of her Apollo sides. Recorded in Los Angeles during a three-day period, the 12 selections feature the singer with a swinging jazz combo that has tenor-saxophonist Lucky Thompson, trumpeter Karl George, vibraphonist Milt Jackson and bassist Charles Mingus among its eight members. The 21-year-old Washington was already quite distinctive at this early stage and easily handles the blues and jive material with color and humor. Recommended despite the brevity (35 minutes) of the CD.

This 1957 LP features the great singer Dinah Washington on a variety of "greatest hits" dating back to 1943. The blues-oriented material includes "Evil Gal Blues," "Trouble in Mind," "TV Is the Thing This Year," and "New Blowtop Blues," and was taken from five different sessions spanning a decade. This accessible effort serves as a fine introduction to the spirited early style of Washington.

One of the more notorious albums in the history of vocal music, What a Diff'rence a Day Makes! is the lush session that bumped up Dinah Washington from the "Queen of the Blues" to a middle-of-the-road vocal wondress - and subsequently disenfranchised quite a few jazz purists. Washington had been praised in the same breath as Holiday and Fitzgerald for more than a decade, but Mercury nevertheless decided to back her with mainstream arrangements (by Belford Hendricks), heavy strings, and wordless vocal choruses similar to the radio hits of the day. Apparently, the mainstream backings didn't faze Washington at all; she proves herself with a voice as individual and evocative as ever. To be honest, the arrangements are quite solid for what they're worth; though it's a bit jarring to hear Washington's voice wrapped in sweet strings, the effect works well more frequently than not…

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…

One of the more notorious albums in the history of vocal music, What a Diff'rence a Day Makes! is the lush session that bumped up Dinah Washington from the "Queen of the Blues" to a middle-of-the-road vocal wondress – and subsequently disenfranchised quite a few jazz purists…

Part of Verve's Diva Series, this Dinah Washington collection serves as a solid introduction to her dynamic work. Featuring such popular Washington mainstays as "What a Diff'rence a Day Made," "If I Were a Bell," and "I'll Close My Eyes," this is a timely introduction to one of the jazz world's most versatile artists. While by no means definitive, at over 14 tracks one could do worse with a single-disc overview than to check this one out first.