Customer Reviews

Sings Bessie Smith

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Great Dinah Washington recored this album in 1957. and while her voice (and personality!) was perfectly suited to material, her musicians somehow made music little bit too ironic.Eddie Chamblee who was a bandleader (and Mr.Washington nr.five!) probably decided to use instruments not as in original versions, but in some sort of mocking them, making some of the songs sounding like in burlesque, vaudeville theater.There are even some snare-rim drumms, which Bessie Smith NEVER used and which made this album hard to take seriously.Its a proof of Dinah Washington's genius that this tribute still have ageless beauty in spite of mocking music background.I love this CD more with every listening. (And her vesrion of "After you've gone" is better than original!) check the similar CD from LaVern Baker!

Dinah Washington and Bessie Smith are 2 of my very 3 favorite singers of all time since a youth. I was greatly excited when I heard about Miss D's tribute to Bessie. No one else really had the right to go there. I was immediately and completely disallusioned by this CD. I kept playing it over and over again to see if it would grow on me. Instead,I became increasingly annoyed! My major contentions with this recording are the totally absurd arrangements and tasteless,tacky musical backgrounds. Dinah sounds unusually hoarse and uninspired. That it could have been a masterpiece is revealed in 3 live recorded performances that Dinah made, with some of the very same musicians, at a Newport Jazz Festival in 1958, where her soulful,anticlimatic version of "Backwater Blues" is even more compelling than Bessie Smith's definitive version of the song. NOW if you REALLY want to hear a more authentic tribute to la Smith, I zealousy recommend "LaVerne Baker Sings Bessie Smith." It will completely blow your mind and is a hair raising religious type experience. The choice of song materials is also more highly selective. Clare Austin,Ronnie Gilbert,and Carrie Smith also made very wonderful musical tributes to Miss Smith,as well.

Dinah Washington's tribute to Bessie Smith is just one of the many great jazz oriented LP's she cut for EmArcy in the 50's(others being"Dinah Jams" "Sings Fats Waller" "In The Land Of Hi-Fi"and "For those In Love" which are all in print on CD & worth owning). This session includes jazz trumpet player Clark Terry, and amny other jazz players, they all try to recreste the 20's sound(But Dinah modernizes it and makes it all sound fresh and sometimes swingin'. Highlight include "Sent Me To The 'Lectric Chair" and "Butter Blues" Highly recommeded to jazz collectors and casual fans alike.

The feedback on this Dinah release has been mixed, and mostly it's due to the questionable remastering job and also Dinah's back-up band for this release. The rickety tick IS annoying and first listens to this CD can turn away even the staunchiest Dinah fans. I was like that too in the beginning, but after repeated listens, Dinah's wonderful interpretations of Bessie's stuff and her fierce performance simply carried me over. Also, not all the tracks have that insulting rickety-tick drummning. On "If I Could Be With You..." "Fine Fat Daddy" and "Backwater Blues", she gives an old-fashioned jazz performance with a jazzy back-up. One wishes if only the entire session had been done with a more jazzy approach as opposed to the Dixieland ironic rickety-tick could this release been much more widely accepted. I don't know what happened on the remastering job, Dinah's voice is relegated to the left channel on most of the tracks. I'd like to think Universal/Verve did the best job they could. Keep in mind the original sessions were done in mono, so converting them to stereo adds the realism---warts and all. Sorry!

I agree with the reviewer who said that this was a bad remastering job, but DINAH WASHINGTON was born to do this tribute album to BESSIE SMITH ,so you'll still want it in your collection.Maybe some readers won't like my commentary, but DINAH might have been the most vicious jazz singer of her time ,but in her case it's a compliment.She probably was also the most blues inclined jazz singer.Maybe this is due to the fact that she married so many times.

This is one of my favorite Dinah Washington recordings. I own the 1986 vinyl re-release of the original mono recording and was thrilled to see it released on CD. I immediately did a One-Click transaction here at Amazon. The DIGITALLY REMASTERED label didn't make me nervous. It should have. This has to be one of the worst remastering jobs I have ever heard. The vocals have been (mostly) removed from the right channel. What is left is an echo of Dinah's voice that lags behind the left channel. This may be due to the irritating echo effect that was added to many recordings in the late 50s and is present on the original. There is also a very noticeable hiss on the right channel. These two glaring flaws make Dinah's wonderful work impossible to listen to on headphones. If you buy this CD, you can enjoy the superior sound of the original by listening to the bonus master take of "Careless Love" and the alternate take of "Trombone Butter".

I am giving this CD two stars because the music itself is so wonderful and the bonus tracks are worth having. I did not have the live material in my collection before this CD. If you are a serious Dinah fan and are interested in collecting all her recordings or you are interested in the bonus tracks, then you might want to buy this. Fortunately for me, I have that vinyl recording and it is in mint condition. It didn't take a lot to clean it up and put it on CD. I can now enjoy the original recording and keep the vinyl in its almost new condition.

Two thumbs down to Kevin "Gang o' Gin" Reeves at Universal Music Studios-East. Perhaps the gin ganged up on him when he "mastered" this recording.

No, I have nothing against stereo technology, but when an album is originally released in mono, it is wise to think twice and listen trice before releasing stereo tracks of the same material...

First of all, the concept of this album is musically conservative: Dinah (otherwise quite at ease with Terry Gibbs, Clifford Brown etc.) sings Bessie Smith's material, in openly conservative arrangements, reminiscent of the 20's and early 30's.
Rickety-clickety drums that annoy the reviewers are not as annoying at few tracks issued in mono on this CD, and stereo version of "Careless Love" is so poorely balanced that the company fulishly added the mono version as an added track, so that everyone can hear how wrong it was to opt for stereo in this case.

Although music is very good and often brilliant (Me and My Gin, Jailhouse Blues, Backwater Blues, Fine Fat Daddy...), 4 stars would be too much for such a bad "remastering" job, were it not for an added bonus of three live performances of the same material in the end of this CD.
These live tracks (Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair, Me and My Gin, Backwater Blues) are at least equal even to the best of the album's original recordings so, in spite of some terrible producing and remastering desicions, this is still a cd to own.

The feedback on this Dinah release has been mixed, and mostly it's due to the questionable remastering job and also Dinah's back-up band for this release. The rickety tick IS annoying and first listens to this CD can turn away even the staunchiest Dinah fans. I was like that too in the beginning, but after repeated listens, Dinah's wonderful interpretations of Bessie's stuff and her fierce performance simply carried me over. Also, not all the tracks have that insulting rickety-tick drummning. On "If I Could Be With You..." "Fine Fat Daddy" and "Backwater Blues", she gives an old-fashioned jazz performance with a jazzy back-up. One wishes if only the entire session had been done with a more jazzy approach as opposed to the Dixieland ironic rickety-tick could this release been much more widely accepted. I don't know what happened on the remastering job, Dinah's voice is relegated to the left channel on most of the tracks. I'd like to think Universal/Verve did the best job they could. Keep in mind the original sessions were done in mono, so converting them to stereo adds the realism---warts and all. Sorry!

There is no doubt that Dinah Washington would be qualified to sing the songs made famous by Bessie Smith. After all, Washington knew plenty about hard living, drinking and the torture of loving the wrong kind of man. But this tribute album is highly flawed, mainly from the novelty arrangements. The instrumental tracks are arranged in such a way that should sound like they were recorded in the 1920's, but to my ears they come off as painfully hokey and frankly embaressing. I find no real fault in Washington's vocal performances, although a few are slightly mannered. She seems to feel these lyrics, especially on the live cuts, where she really cuts loose. I dislike this set for the same reason I dislike her popular albums like Unforgetable and What A Diff'rence a Day Makes. The instrumental backing simply does not do justice to the vocals.