The Dinah Washington Centennial: A Complete Annotated Filmography, Part 3: DINAH AT NEWPORT, 1955 & 1958
Jazz on A Summer's Day (filmed in 1958, released in 1959)
Special Thanks to Mark Cantor for information and input in this series!
Of all the major singers at the very pinnacle of the jazz pantheon, perhaps the least represented on film and video is, surprisingly, one of the most popular - both in her own lifetime and since. Dinah Washington, whose centennial we celebrate this month, was no obscure artist in a garrett, but a hugely successful hitmaker, first as a band vocalist with Lionel Hampton, then as a solo star on the R&B circuit in the early postwar era, then as a true crossover sensation in the years leading up to her tragically early death at the age of 39.
Thus it’s curious that she was never captured on film in the same way that dozens of her colleagues were. Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Anita O’Day, and Peggy Lee are all represented in at least three incredibly prolific platforms for filmed musical performances of the ‘40s and ‘50s: Soundies, Universal short subjects, and Snader Telescriptions. One has to wonder why. (Side note: Nat King Cole qualifies as the rare African American artist who was documented extensively on all three of those platforms.)
Indeed, there are so few films extant of the woman who self-identified as “The Queen” that we can go through them all rather easily here on Slouching Towards Birdland. In fact, it’s technically incorrect to describe this as a “filmography” since Washington only appeared once in something that could be considered a theatrical film, the 1959 release Jazz on a Summer’s Day. The rest are all television productions, and other than the series of shorts described in this first installment, all of them were completely live performances that were fortunately captured via kinescope.
DINAH WASHINGTON AT NEWPORT, 1955 (audio only)
Dinah Washington appeared at least twice at the Newport Jazz Festival, on both occasions working with her fellow 1924 baby (and fellow 2024 centurion) Max Roach. In July 1955 she was backed by the rhythm section of the Clifford Brown-Max Roach quintet, including the drummer-bandleader himself, with pianist Richie Powell and bassist George Morrow. Seven tunes were recorded, which have still never been issued on LP or CD, although they were briefly made available as a download by the Wolfgang’s Vault organization roughly 50 years after the fact.
Pennies From Heaven (Johnny Burke, Arthur Johnston) 01:35
I Won't Cry Anymore (Fred Wise, Al Frisch) 02:11
Teach Me Tonight (Sammy Cahn, Gene DePaul) 02:52
A Foggy Day (George & Ira Gershwin) 02:43
Such A Night (Lincoln Chase) 02:26
The Birth of the Blues (Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown, Ray Henderson) 02:59
If It's the Last Thing I Do (Sammy Cahn, Saul Chaplin) 02:32
for the sake of convenience, here’s the audio, all 18 minutes of it (seven songs), in one track:
JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY
Dinah Washington’s set performed on July 5, 1958
Three years later in 1958, Washington again performed with Roach, this time with two different groups, both of which featured Roach. There’s what seems to have been a planned set; several numbers were issued a few months later on the Mercury LP Newport ‘58. Then she made what might have been a spontaneous appearance with an all-star collective combining members of the Roach group and the Terry Gibbs Sextet. Perhaps aware that this is a jazz audience, she is keen to plug her current album of Bessie Smith songs.
From the Newport 1958 LP - also included in the Japanese Complete Dinah Washington on Mercury series:
Dinah Washington - vocals
Blue Mitchell - trumpet
Melba Liston - trombone
Harold Ousley - tenor saxophone
Sahib Shihab - baritone saxophone
Wynton Kelly - piano
Paul West - bass
Max Roach - drums
01. Lover Come Back to Me (Sig Romberg, Oscar Hammerstein II) [2:42]
02. Crazy Love (Sammy Cahn, Phil Tumincello) [3:46]
03. Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair (George Brooks) [3:53] (Only on Japanese issues)
04. Me and My Gin (Harry Burke) [3:27] (Only on Japanese issues)
05. Back Water Blues (Bessie Smith) [6:01]
Terry Gibbs - vibraphone
Don Elliott - vibraphone, mellophone
Urbie Green - trombone
Wynton Kelly - piano
Paul West - bass
Max Roach - drums
06. Backstage Blues (Don Elliott, Terry Gibbs, Urbie Green) [9:16]
07. Julie and Jake (“Rhythm” changes) (Terry Gibbs) [11:03]
Add: Dinah Washington - vocals, vibraphone
08. All of Me (Gerald Marks, Seymour Simons) [5:31] (video below!)
Fortunately, this was the year that photographer Bert Stern was there with a camera crew, and captured 80 rather spectacular minutes of the five-day festival, including one number by Washington and Gibbs. The results were issued as part of the beautiful - and somewhat controversial - “concert movie,” Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959), amounting to what seems to have been Washington’s only appearance in a theatrical film.
There are four female singers featured in the final film: jazz singer Anita O’Day, blues singer Big Maybelle (looking especially dainty in what seems to be a white wedding dress with a royal tiara), and gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. And then there’s Dinah Washington, who seems to be doing what all of them can do, all at once. She sings a jubilant reading of the jazz standard “All Of Me.” (I knew Gerald Marks, who had written “All of Me” nearly 30 years earlier; I always wish I had asked him if he’d ever seen this movie.)
As mentioned, the band is a hybrid of the front line of the Terry Gibbs Sextet, with Gibbs himself (like Washington and Roach, he too has a centennial this year, and he’s alive to celebrate it) plus multi-instrumentalist Don Elliott playing mellophone and trombonist Urbie Green, with Roach’s rhythm section, featuring Wynton Kelly, who had worked with Washington many times, and bassist Paul West alongside the leader.
Washington’s “All of Me” is loose and jazzy. She was one artist who truly belonged in equal parts to the worlds of jazz and blues, starting in the African-American church, coming to fame in the Black swing bands, spending the bulk of her career as a pioneer of rhythm-and-blues, and eventually becoming a mainstream pop star as well. Nadine Cohadas, in her excellent biography of Washington, describes the rather avant-garde dress that the singer is wearing. For his part, Roach is wearing shades, even though this is a nighttime concert; if he’s trying to look “cool,” he succeeds. Urbie Green takes a memorable solo, and Gibbs himself is full of enthusiasm.
The one drawback of Jazz on a Summer’s Day, as viewers have noted for the last 65 years, is that director Stern spends way too much time pointing his camera away from the music. It’s one thing to occasionally cut away to capture a crowd reaction, but Stern abuses the privilege. There are some lovely nighttime shots of the audience, including one woman who seems to be mouthing the lyrics (or some of them) as Dinah sings, as well as stylish uptown attendees in furs. When we cut back to the bandstand, Washington has already joined Gibbs at the vibraphone, and he looks fairly ecstatic as she stands behind him and hammers out a few well-chosen notes of her own.
Although I wish we could have seen Washington approaching Gibbs and his expression when he realized she was going to play the vibes with him, that seems like a minor complaint. The performance is brilliant, and it’s vividly filmed, like no concert movie since, and captures an amazing moment; the photography and the color are nothing less than spectacular.
PS: Like Washington and Roach, Terry Gibbs is also celebrating his 100th birthday this year - and, fortunately for us, he is around to enjoy it. (Below: Terry Gibbs in 2018, and there’s a nice interview with him here.
)
The Dinah Washington Centennial:
A Complete Annotated Filmography
Part One:
The Showtime at the Apollo Films (1954)
Part Two:
Bandstand Revue (1955)
”That’s All I Want From You”
Crescendo (1957)
”Birth of the Blues”
Part Three:
Jazz on a Summer’s Day (filmed 1958, released 1959)
”All of Me”
Part Four:
Here’s Duffy (CBC 1959)
”Lover Come Back to Me”
”Send Me to the ‘Lectric Chair”
The Singin’, Swingin’ Years (1960)
”Makin’ Whoopee”
”What a Diff’rence a Day Makes”
1960 Europe (?)
“Lover Come Back To Me/I've Got A Crush On You/They Didn't Believe Me”
Remembering Russell Malone, a Jazz Guitar Great With a Larger-Than-Life Personality
Huge thanks to The New York Sun for allowing me to write this memoir of our dear friend Russell Malone, whose untimely passing a few days ago has both shocked and saddened the jazz world. The New York Sun story is here, but if you have a hard time accessing it, write me for a PDF. God Bless.
Very special thanks to the fabulous Ms. Elizabeth Zimmer, for expert proofreading of this page, and scanning for typos, mistakes, and other assorted boo-boos!
Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz - and jazz-adjacent - singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen, who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00PM Eastern.
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SING! SING! SING!
June 29 - Americana - For the Fourth of July - Songs of Civil Rights & The African American Experience
July 6 - The Four Freshmen & Other Great Jazz Vocal Groups of the 1950s
July 13 - Bastille Day: Guest Co-Host ERIC COMSTOCK shares his favorite French songs! Formidable!
July 20 - The Margaret Whiting Centennial: “Happy Birthday Maggie!”
July 27 - “Calypso Blues” OR “It’s The New Calypso Bebop!”
August 3 - The Tony Bennett Birthday Special: Tony Sings the Cole Porter Songbook
August 10 - “A Little Moonlight & A Little Tenderness: The Harry Woods Songbook”
August 17 - “Fat Daddies & Skinny Mamas: The Body Shaming Show”
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