EXCLUSIVE: A big-scale biopic primarily based on the lifetime of the legendary jazz and blues vocalist Dinah Washington is within the works, with veteran British playwright Winsome Pinnock signed on to jot down the script and Danny Glover govt producing.
The movie will chronicle a pivotal two-week interval in London on the peak of Washington’s profession, following the worldwide success of her 1959 Grammy-winning crossover hit “What A Difference A Day Made.”
“Dinah was a superlative musician who harnessed the ability of music to disrupt, resist, and heal,” Pinnock mentioned in an announcement. “ Whereas her rebelliousness got here at a price, it allowed her to transcend the expectations positioned on Black ladies and blaze a path for each artist who got here after her.”
Born Ruth Lee Jones, Washington was born in Alabama and moved to Chicago as a baby, the place she grew up within the church, enjoying the piano and directing the choir. At 15, after successful an novice contest on the well-known Regal Theater, she landed her first skilled gigs and recorded her first singles. Washington would go on to dominate the charts all through the Fifties and early ‘60s, incomes the moniker the “Queen of the Blues.”
Dinah Washington. Credit score: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Pictures.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Pictures
Lots of Washington’s most well-known recordings, similar to “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes”, “No person Is aware of the Means I Really feel This Morning”, and “Mad Concerning the Boy” at the moment are classics throughout genres and endlessly reproduced in movies, TV, and commercials. However after Washington died in 1963, her music was largely ignored till the mid-Eighties. Covers of her songs by modern artists, together with Amy Winehouse, Girl Gaga, and Ledisi, reintroduced her legacy to a brand new era.
“Dinah’s voice was a pressure of nature. It might break your coronary heart and elevate your spirit in the identical breath,” Glover mentioned of Washington. “As somebody who has spent many years honoring the legacy of jazz and blues, I see this movie as important. I used to be honored and excited to turn out to be concerned on this mission.”
Pinnock is a British stage veteran. She was the primary Black British girl to have a play produced by the Nationwide Theatre. Her stage credit embrace The Wind of Change, Go away Taking, Image Palace, A Hero’s Welcome, A Rock in Water, and Speaking in Tongues.
“It’s taken 23 years to convey her story thus far,” mentioned producer Angie Lee Cobbs, who’s shepherding the mission at Rolling Fork Productions after securing the life rights from the Washington Property. “Winsome brings the proper mixture of inventive brilliance and a deep understanding of what it means to be a groundbreaking girl of colour within the arts. Her voice might be important in honoring Dinah’s legacy.”
Cobbs is a Chicago native. She has labored in manufacturing on a wide range of characteristic tasks, together with Miami Vice, Avengers: Infinity Warfare, and Excessive Flying Chook.
Washington’s grandchildren are supporting the mission. They added in an announcement: “Our grandmother’s singing went past the lyrics. It was a connection along with her viewers rooted in shared emotion, wrestle, and fact. Preserving her legacy is extremely vital to us, and we can not wait to share her story with audiences around the globe.”
