Coming Home to the Blues
Washington returned to her roots with a band that actually understood the material, and it showed.
By the time Dinah Washington recorded Back to the Blues, she had spent years chasing pop success—string arrangements, commercial sessions, the whole machinery designed to sell records to audiences beyond the jazz world. It worked commercially, but something got lost in translation. This album marks a deliberate turn back toward what made her great in the first place: the blues, played with musicians who got it.
Arranged by Fred Norman, the session has a different feel than Washington's earlier attempts at Bessie Smith material. The backup band is tighter, more sympathetic to what she was doing. You hear it immediately—this isn't a jazz singer slumming in blues territory, or a blues singer trying to sound sophisticated. Washington sounds like she's remembering why she loved this music. The band lets her breathe. There's space for her voice to matter more than the orchestration.
AllMusic reviewer Scott Yanow noted that compared to her other sessions from this period, this one actually worked, with Washington in prime form and a genuine feeling for the material. It's not her peak work overall—that came earlier, when she was recording with the best small groups in jazz—but it's a corrective, a moment where commercial calculation stepped aside and she got to do what she wanted. For listeners interested in Washington's later years, this is where the story gets interesting again.
