Cynicism is the enemy of romanticism. Dinah Washington certainly caught a lot of flak from critics who felt she should have remained true to her blues/jazz background, and the majority of them panned her shift to lush pop music as little more than a money grabbing sellout. I, however, had no such expectations.

I heard Dinah Washington’s voice for the first time when I was two years old. To the best of my ability to recall, she is my very first musical memory, and I thought she made the made the most beautiful music in the world. Virtually a baby, I could not understand the emotions that she elicited in me. She gave me goosebumps before I knew what goosebumps were, or why I was getting them. She still does.

When I stop to listen, I find myself in awe, lost in a mystical, magical, mystifying state of suspension. She is a song stylist of the highest order, up there with any great singer whose name you can conjure. Critics heard romance and considered it sappy. I heard the same music with pure innocence and felt something a lot like love. Nowadays, I could say that it was her phrasing, her perfect pitch, or her expert use of vibrato that overwhelms me, but it hardly matters when a simple collection of songs can evoke magic such as this.

Featured Tracks:

I Remember You

I Thought About You

That's All There Is to That

I Won't Cry Anymore

I'm Thru with Love

Cry Me a River

What a Diff'rence a Day Makes

Nothing in the World

Manhattan

Time after Time

It's Magic

A Sunday Kind of Love

November 1959 - Billboard Charted #34