Dinah Washington

Dinah Washington, born Ruth Lee Jones in 1924 in Alabama and raised in Chicago, was one of the most popular American singers of the mid-20th century. She worked across jazz, blues, R&B, gospel, and pop, bringing a gritty voice with sharp diction and a gospel-inflected style to everything she recorded. She called herself the Queen of the Blues, and her records dominated the R&B charts throughout the early 1950s before she crossed over to wider commercial success.