Dinah Washington - Ill Wind Ballad Medley (Roulette Records 1962)

"Ill Wind" is a ballad medley. This is Dinah Washington at her most reflective with Jack Wilson on piano and backed with delightful interventions by Frank Wess on flute. The medley consists of eight songs and are in the order sung, Ill Wind / For All We Know / I Could Have Told You So / Smoke Gets In Your Eyes / Goodbye / Make The Man Love Me / Blue Gardenia / I Concentrate On You. Recorded in New York, March 1962 (Roulette Records). Dinah Washington, born Ruth Lee Jones (August 29, 1924 -- December 14, 1963), was an American singer and pianist, who has been cited as "the most popular black female recording artist of the '50s". Primarily a jazz vocalist, she performed and recorded in a wide variety of styles including blues, R&B, and traditional pop music, and gave herself the title of "Queen of the Blues". She is a 1986 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. According to Richard S. Ginell at Allmusic: "[She] was at once one of the most beloved and controversial singers of the mid-20th century - beloved to her fans, devotees, and fellow singers; controversial to critics who still accuse her of selling out her art to commerce and bad taste. Her principal sin, apparently, was to cultivate a distinctive vocal style that was at home in all kinds of music, be it R&B, blues, jazz, middle of the road pop - and she probably would have made a fine gospel or country singer had she the time. Hers was a gritty, salty, high-pitched voice, marked by absolute clarity of diction and clipped, bluesy phrasing..." Washington was married seven times. Her husbands were John Young (1942--43), George Jenkins (1946), Robert Grayson (1947), bassist and bandleader Walter Buchanan (1950), saxophonist Eddie Chamblee (1957), Rafael Campos (1961), and pro-football player Dick "Night Train" Lane (1963). She had two sons: George Kenneth Jenkins and Robert Grayson. Washington was an outspoken unapologetic liberal Democrat. She once said, "I am who I am and I know what I know. I'm a Democrat plain and simple, always have been. I'd never vote for a Republican because in my opinion they don't have what it takes to run any kind of private or public office. That's all." Early on the morning of December 14, 1963, Washington's seventh husband Lane went to sleep with his wife, and awoke later to find her slumped over and not responsive. Doctor B. C. Ross came to the scene to pronounce her dead. An autopsy later showed a lethal combination of secobarbital and amobarbital, which contributed to her death at the age of 39. She is buried in the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois.