Cohodas’ scrupulously detailed book paints a clear picture of the musical and personal life of singer Dinah Washington. Her flamboyance, her temper, her many love affairs and marriages often overshadowed her towering talent as a musician. From her youth in Tuscaloosa to her adolescence in Chicago to her rise to stardom as both “Queen of the Blues” and jazz singer, Cohodas leaves no stones unturned. One cannot help but love this supremely confident lady who harbored personal insecurities and who, beneath her tough exterior, was kind, generous, loving and cared for her family throughout her life. The book includes an Index, a Discography, and copious notes.

Nadine Cohodas is the author of Strom Thurmond and the Politics of Southern Change, The Band Played Dixie: Race and the Liberal Conscience at Ole Miss, and Spinning Blues into Gold: The Chess Brothers and the Legendary Chess Records, which was a New York Times Notable Book of 2000 and inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2002 as a classic of blues literature.