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PROLOGUE

"George Gershwin wouldn’t know his own song when I’m through with it. I can’t stay hidebound to any melody."
—DINAH WASHINGTON 

It was a Saturday night in February 1961 on Chicago’s South Side. The patrons at Roberts Show Lounge were in a festive mood—the men in sharp business suits, the women dressed somewhere between Sunday church and New Year’s Eve. A few whites were scattered among the tables; the rest were black Chicagoans waiting expectantly for the show to begin even though most of them had seen the star attraction many times.

That didn’t matter. When Dinah Washington was in town, the music was always good and always different. No one knew when something unusual might happen. What would she sing? What would she wear? What was new in the offstage life that raised eyebrows and made headlines?

Dinah had just married her sixth husband, a slight, handsome actor twelve years her junior. But it was a good bet she’d have a story about the good-looking man who’d caught her eye the other day. She might tell a few jokes, too. And if the patrons were noisy when she sang, Dinah’s sharp tongue would silence them. It was grand to watch as a spectator, though less inviting to be on the other end of her momentary annoyance.

Shortly after ten the announcer came over the loudspeaker: “Ladies and gentlemen, Miss D—Dinah Washington.”

She walked to the microphone with a slow, confident gait, sizing up this night’s audience as they took her in from their seats. She was just over five feet but seemed much taller. It wasn’t the high-heeled dress shoes but her command of the space and the moment. She turned to the band and signaled the key. The piano player hit the opening notes. The bass and drums came in a split second later, and Dinah was off. She opened upbeat, then sang some ballads, finally some blues, first the bawdy tunes and then the ones that made her cry with those lines about love gone sour and life all alone.

At the end the audience, on their feet, cheered for more.

Dinah treasured those moments, hard earned and savored in the early morning hours when the applause had faded. They were the culmination of the silent, even furtive dreams of the young girl born Ruth Jones far away from the glory of center stage and the fans who would one day call her Queen.