Dinah's 17-year career was -- by any standards present or past -- remarkably prolific.  It includes 500 separate recordings (individual tracks) .. not counting the 40 some odd live performances (at Birdland, the Apollo, Basin Street, etc.) recently unearthed by Baldwin Street Music.  During her lifetime, this accounted for:

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nearly 50 pre-LP-era releases (78rpm singles/33rpm EPs) many of which produced certified jukebox hits.  [on Mercury for the most part]
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another 2 dozen albums (LPs) including single-volume tributes to Bessie Smith and Fats Waller [on both Mercury and roulette] ... which themselves spawned as many as 3 dozen more 45rpm singles [What a difference a day made being the all-time chart-topper]
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a landmark LIVE recording (recently reissued with its complete session and as an audiophile release); a headlining appearance in a critically-acclaimed concert film; and, quite recently, 2 new CDs of previously-unavailable LIVE performances [on Baldwin Street Music]

That said, many of her early releases were covers of hits recorded first by white artists of the time, including Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Bing Crosby, Jo Stafford, Julie London, and the like.  However, when her career gained the broader audience it deserved, it also established a number of signature songs which -- in at least some cases -- manage to ward off cover artists to this day.  Soon after her young death, both Roulette and Mercury spun out a number of single- and multi-disk LP compilations and original package reissues.  (First issues of some of her better-known LPs remain very much in demand, and regularly trade for $30 on up.)  In more recent years, the republication of this material to CD has overlapped and recycled practically every fragment of Dinah's extant recordings.  This includes foreign and domestic labels profiteering from these very archives, with knock-off compilations and, in some cases, track-for-track duplicates of sets issued by Dinah's legitimate licensees.

Almost 40 years since her death ... there is much to buy, still much to discover, and so very much to cherish of that which was Dinah.

The complete chronology

For the fanatical ...

... scroll Dinah's complete session discography (the appendix to Jim Haskins' 1987 biography).

 

Copyright © 1987 | author: Jim Haskins | publisher: William Morrow & Co., Inc., New York, NY | ISBN 0-688-04846-3

The quick and dirty

1943-46 (pre-Mercury)

[3 titles depicted below feature roughly the same performances]

 or or

Verve/Mercury (1946-1961, seven 3-volume sets)

Roulette (1961-1963, 5 reissues/recompilations by Bluenote/Capitol)

Baldwin Street Music (live performances 1948-55, 1962)

Miscellaneous

Mercury/Verve artist series (the single-dose Dinah)

Dinah Washington's Finest Hour Ultimate Dinah Washington Verve Jazz Masters 40: Sings Standards Jazz Masters 19: Dinah Washington Jazz 'Round Midnight The Essential Dinah Washington: The Great Songs Compact Jazz

[pictured above] the maddening 'best of' series (most recent to the earliest): 
Finest Hour, Ultimate (Abbey Lincoln's picks), Verve Jazz Masters (#40 & #19), Jazz 'Round Midnight, The Essential, Compact Jazz (Sings the Blues), Compact Jazz

The collectible Dinah (coming soon)

The Sides (78rpm)

(coming soon)

Original EPs

(coming soon)

Original LPs

(coming soon)
 notice the unfortunate cover art !!

The Legacy Reissues (vinyl)

(coming soon)
 The Jazz Sides, etc.

Various Appearances (w/other artists)

(coming soon)

Imports/International Sets

(coming soon)

Bootlegs

(coming soon)

'Duty-free discs'

Curious single-disc compilations, spanning the entire Mercury/Verve catalog

etc.