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Queen
The Life And Music Of Dinah Washington
by Nadine Cohodas
Legendary blues vocalist Dinah Washington is profiled in this biography by "Spinning Blues Into Gold" author Nadine Cohodas.
Pantheon, 576 pages
08/24/2004
$28.50
ISBN: 0375421483
Nonfiction
Biographies & Memoirs
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Library Journal Harold V. Cordry
A breakthrough portrait, this is highly recommended. [Aug 2004, p.82]
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]
San Francisco Chronicle Carlo Wolff
[An] exhaustive, enthralling biography... essential reading for people interested in popular culture.
The Economist
Cohodas's rich, well-researched biography compellingly charts her subject's rise, and the stormy dramas which attended it.
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]
Boston Globe Renee Graham
Superb... this isn't a book concerned only with gossip and dish.
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.
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.
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.
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]
Chicago Sun-Times Jeff Johnson
It fails to capture the essence of the artist or the woman.
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