I first met Dinah Washington in a bar. In the winter of 1995 she’d been dead for more years than I’d been alive (and almost for as long as she’d been alive). What she shared was the wisdom of a friend who’d been there and done that. “Oh, honey, I know,” she assured me with her warm voice while I sat on a stool, letting the owner pour me free scotch. My boyfriend waited at home, convinced I was preparing to leave him. I wasn’t sure. About that, about anything. Dinah laid out for me that there was nothing pure to love, betrayal, and whatever existed in between. Dinah knew there were aches and itches you couldn’t explain, an impulse that drove you out of your life for an hour to flirt with the slightly seedy bar owner before you went back and made dinner for the good man who loved you.
When I learned more about Dinah’s career, I realized how fitting it was to meet her in a gin joint. In her day Dinah was known as “Queen of the Jukeboxes.” Not only did her singles spin time and again down at the corner bar, but throughout her career she sang in nightclubs, the places people came for the consolation of a drink, a darkened room, and her voice.
That first night, her version of “Unforgettable” hooked me. I knew I would never again think of Nat’s as indisputable. I couldn’t recall hearing such a compelling voice, one that grabbed you by the collar and made you look life straight on. “Who is this?” I asked the owner, and when he gave me her name, he did me a greater favor than comping the scotch. I would have found Dinah eventually, but finding Dinah during those dark hours was a sign the Universe was on my side.
I shared Dinah with my boyfriend, who later became my husband. We bought her “This Bitter Earth” and played those tracks down. It is his memory that comes back to me often when I hear those songs. I wonder if he listens to Dinah now. I got the cd.
Mostly, though, it is myself I remember when I listen to Dinah. When she sings “What a Difference a Day Makes,” she reminds me of that miraculous bliss of falling in love. “I’m Through With Love” echoes the pounding disappointment. “Crazy He Calls Me,” sung with a drum kit, a piano and a saxophone, holds the sexiness of intimacy. At the end of that live recording, you hear Dinah’s voice end with a knowing smile, and the applause swells, a low laughter of delight rolling in from the audience like waves to the shore.
Dinah’s friendship has lasted longer than any of my romances. Itunes tells me I have 92 of her songs, 5 hours of her music. What a gift she left the world, 2 years before I entered it. What great luck it was for me to find her. We’ve traveled some distances, she and I, and who knows where else I may listen to her in the years ahead. Tonight, I pop up her songs on my laptop as I sit poolside in the late August sunshine and drink a toast in her honor. Truly, the best die too young.