"Send Me To The 'Lectric Chair" by Dinah Washington

Dinah Washington's 1957 album The Bessie Smith Songbook - from which this song, Send Me To The 'lectric Chair, is taken - cemented her reputation as Queen of the Blues. The Pop Culture Institute would like very much to recommend it to our readers, except it's still only available on cassette*; that in itself is pretty much the major cause of the blues around here today. Well, that and the fact that this gifted singer with the distinctive voice only lived to the age of 39.

Born on this day in 1929, Washington had joined Lionel Hampton's band by 1944, made herself a sensation by the mid-Fifties, and was dead of an accidental overdose by December 1963.

*Our older readers will remember cassettes as being the only way to efficiently steal music prior to MP3s.
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