If you think you’ve figured out where Deborah Cox fits into today’s music scene, you’ve got some more figuring to do.

Having conquered the pop and R&B charts as one of ace record executive Clive Davis’ discoveries and starred on Broadway in Elton John’s and Tim Rice’s Aida, the 32-year-old Toronto-born singer/actress now takes a leap into something entirely different. She has paid effusive tribute to a childhood idol of hers, the beloved, troubled Dinah Washington, with her new June 19 Decca debut album, Destination Moon, that will surprise her fans and catapult her into the ranks of the leading jazz singers of our time.

Dinah Washington is one of those iconic names that trip off the tongue when one brings up the subject of the great female vocalists of the 20th century who were associated with jazz. But she stood apart from Ella, Billie, Anita, Sassy and most of the rest in one important way: she did not like to be labeled and placed in a box for convenient file-keeping. Her absolutely clear-cut, tart, high-pitched voice could fit comfortably into just about any style of her era – be it R&B, blues, straight-ahead combo or big-band jazz, or easy-listening pop. This versatility made her controversial as well as beloved, especially after she crashed the Top 10 pop charts with a series of lushly orchestrated hits after 1959.

Washington’s personal life was tumultuous – she had seven marriages behind her; a salty, combative personality that tangled with figures in the music business; and drinking and weight problems that eventually contributed to her accidental early death in 1963 at the age of 39. Nevertheless, she toured and recorded compulsively, eventually making some 446 recordings for the Mercury label (now part of the Universal Music Group) between 1946 and 1961, and several more for Roulette in her two remaining years. Moreover, her personal turmoil undoubtedly affected her music. Her attitude about love was tough, direct, unsentimental, often strikingly at odds with the romantic mood-music backgrounds supporting her.

Deborah Cox’s first exposure to Washington came very early, when she was a little girl. “I first became aware of Dinah when I was growing up, when I was about 8 or 9 years old” she says. “A lot of jazz was played about the house. I heard my mother playing a 45 of “This Bitter Earth” – the first song I had ever heard from Dinah. It was the richness and the tonality of her voice that I gravitated to.”

Later in life, Deborah realized that apart from the turbulent personal issues, she had a great deal in common with Dinah in terms of how she wants to be perceived as an artist. “I’ve been reading the book, Queen [by Nadine Cohodas], and found a lot of myself in her life,” she says. “She did, like, 360 dates a year. I don’t do that many [she laughs], but I love being on the road, performing and touring. She was a fearless woman when it came to making decisions about what she was passionate about, and I relate to that, too. When I’m really passionate about something, it’s do or die. I really focus on it.”

Deborah goes on to say about Dinah: “She was also a woman who hated to be pigeonholed because she felt that she had more to offer as an artist. I feel the same way. I don’t want to be pigeonholed as an R&B singer. I’m doing this to broaden people’s awareness of what I can do and also for the sheer love of her music.”

As a result, Deborah’s homage to Dinah Washington doesn’t lean overwhelmingly toward one particular style. It was designed from the beginning to be a compendium of several of Dinah’s idioms – the big-band swing of “All Of Me” and “Destination Moon,” swaggering R&B (“I Don’t Hurt Anymore),” the blues that earned her the misleading nickname “Queen of the Blues” (“Misery,” “New Blowtop Blues”), the lush ballads that put her on the jukeboxes of Middle America (“What a Diff’rence a Day Made,” “This Bitter Earth”). Deborah unleashes a powerful, swinging, jazzy vocal style that will pleasantly surprise many.

For the arrangements and the production, Deborah turned to the highly-versatile New York-based music man Rob Mounsey, whose credits with such diverse performers as Paul Simon, Steely Dan, Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett, Eddie Daniels and countless others made him a natural choice. “After the first meeting, I knew, because he had such great instincts where the project should be and we both had the same ideas,” she says. “We didn’t want to do one style of record. Dinah was so many styles.

“I had my own personal favorites – ‘This Bitter Earth,’ ‘What a Diff’rence a Day Made,’ ‘Baby (You Got What it Takes’),’ which they played at my wedding. I’ve always loved the spiciness and feistiness of the song, how Brook Benton and Dinah spar with each other on the record. ‘This Bitter Earth’ is such a sad song, so poignant and passionate. I listened to [the original records] quite a bit, then, after a while, I had to take a break from them just so that I would have her vibe to reflect on instead of listening and copying. It was important to me to have my own style, but with her influence on it as well.”

Another first for Deborah was the way in which this record was made – live in the studio, with 40 musicians in the same room with her, playing and singing in real time under Rob’s direction. “I had never recorded a record like that before,” she says. “That was just a treat because all of us would be feeding off each other and inspiring each other, and it was a lot of fun. I was thinking I’d go back to her [Dinah’s] time and how amazing it was to be able to be in the studio with everybody and cut these songs, the magic that happens. A lot of that gets missed otherwise.

“This is a complete labor of love, a concept album that I’ve had in mind for years,” she says. “This is a project that’s an introduction to all of the styles that I grew up with. It’s a way to expose another side of me that I’ve kept quiet. It’s a chance to look inside my history of influences and hear where I’m coming from as an artist. I think people will be pleasantly surprised.”

Article courtesy of Dan Klores Communications