Legendary blues vocalist Dinah Washington is profiled in this biography by "Spinning Blues Into Gold" author Nadine Cohodas.
Critic Reviews
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Outstanding
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Library Journal Harold V. Cordry
A breakthrough portrait, this is highly recommended. [Aug 2004, p.82]
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
Although Cohodas swamps the reader with a mass of exhausting details and her interpretations of Washington's music sometimes lack depth, she has written the definitive biography of this important singer. [5 Jul 2004, p.47]
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Carlo Wolff
[An] exhaustive, enthralling biography... essential reading for people interested in popular culture.
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Favorable
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The Economist
Cohodas's rich, well-researched biography compellingly charts her subject's rise, and the stormy dramas which attended it.
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Favorable
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Booklist Ray Olson
Cohodas seems to have found every scrap of writing about her and talked to every living soul who knew her. [Aug 2004, p.1888]
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Favorable
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Boston Globe Renee Graham
Superb... this isn't a book concerned only with gossip and dish.
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Favorable
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Chicago Tribune Maurice Isserman
In some ways Cohadas' "Queen" rises above the limitations of the usual star bio, particularly in its grasp of Washington's role as cultural innovator.
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Mixed
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Washington Post Valerie Boyd
Vital but vexing... [Cohodas] gives us too little of Washington's inner life and offers only superficial interpretations of her music.
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Unfavorable
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New York Review Of Books David Hajdu
Cohodas's Queen, for all its value in treating an underappreciated subject seriously, would have benefited from an injection of Washington's vigor. It is a placid book weakened by slack prose.
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Unfavorable
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Kirkus Reviews
Cohodas is a graceless writer with no feel for the nuances of vocal or instrumental performance. Worse, in her needlessly fussy day-today approach, she supplies hardly an iota of intelligent analysis about the singer's creative impulses or internal life. [1 Jul 2004, p.614]
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Unfavorable
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Chicago Sun-Times Jeff Johnson
It fails to capture the essence of the artist or the woman.
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