Since that moment of bliss, that thrilling kiss

Thursday music corner: Jazz vocalist Dinah Washington, born Ruth Lee Jones in Alabama in 1924, moved to Chicago as a child and won talent shows in her teenage years. Playing the same regular Chicago club gig as Billie Holiday, she took on a more distinctive stage name suggested by the club owner, and was headhunted by Lionel Hampton for his band. Recording from the mid-1940s, Washington had chart hits from 1944 and her public acclaim grew through the 1950s. She released dozens of solo albums, and five of her singles topped the US R&B charts: Am I Asking Too Much (1948), Baby Get Lost (1949), Baby (You've Got What It Takes) and A Rockin' Good Way (To Mess Around And Fall In Love) (both with Brook Benton, 1960), and This Bitter Earth (1960). She died in in Detroit in 1963, aged 39.

What a Diff'rence a Day Makes was written in 1934 by Mexican songwriter María Grever, and an English version was released in the same year by both Harry Roy & his Orchestra, and the Dorsey Brothers featuring Bob Crosby (younger brother of Bing). Washington's 1959 version appeared as the title track on her tenth studio album. The single won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.     

Dinah Washington - What a Diff'rence a Day Makes (1959)

See also:

Music: Dinah Washington - Baby Get Lost (1949)

Music: Brook Benton - So Many Ways (1959)

Music: Billie Holiday - Trav'lin' Light (1942)

Don't need a stranger to tell me that my baby's let me down

Thursday music corner: Storied American country singer-songwriter Emmylou Harris (b. Alabama, 1947) has released 22 studio albums since her 1970 debut Gliding Bird, with her most recent solo album being 2011's Hard Bargain. Fourteen of her albums have reached the top 10 of the US Country album chart, and she has five US Country chart-topping singles: Together Again and Sweet Dreams (both 1976), Two More Bottles of Wine (1978), Beneath Still Waters (1980) and (Lost His Love) On Our Last Date (1982). She has won 14 Grammy awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018.

The hard-driving country boogie Luxury Liner is the title and opening track of Harris' fourth album, released in December 1976. The track, an ode to the long-distance tour bus, features Harris' Hot Band in its prime, and was written by Gram Parsons. The album is best remembered for including the first cover version of Townes Van Zandt's Pancho & Lefty, and it featured Harris' cover of Chuck Berry's (You Never Can Tell) C'est la Vie as its first single.

Emmylou Harris - Luxury Liner (1976) 

See also:

Music: Emmylou Harris - (You Never Can Tell) C'est la Vie (live, 1977)

Music: Gram Parsons w/ Emmylou Harris - Ooh Las Vegas (1974)

Music: Townes Van Zandt - Pancho & Lefty (1972)

Here she comes like a child with a gun

Thursday music corner: Irish alternative singer-songwriter Gavin Friday, whose 67th birthday it is today, performed with Dublin punk outfit the Virgin Prunes from 1977 until 1986. The Prunes released two studio albums and seven singles before disbanding. Friday, now solo, went on to release six solo albums and 10 singles. He has worked extensively in film, appearing on nine soundtracks including Short Cuts, In the Name of the Father, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, Mission: Impossible, and Moulin Rouge. He has also contributed to four film scores including working with Quincy Jones on Get Rich or Die Tryin'.

Little Black Dress appeared on Friday's third solo album, Shag Tobacco, released in 1995. It includes guest backing vocals from U2's Bono and The Edge; Friday had met Bono at a north Dublin teenage house party circa 1973 and remained close friends. 

Gavin Friday - Little Black Dress (1995)

See also:

Music: Virgin Prunes - Pagan Lovesong (1982) 

Music: Bono & Gavin Friday - In the Name of the Father (1994)

Music: Gavin Friday - Angel (1995)

Sing in the darkness, dance to dawn

Thursday music corner: British singer-songwriter Anna Calvi was born in London in 1980. She has released three albums, four EPs and 11 singles since 2010, with all her albums reaching the top 40 of the UK albums chart. Her first self-titled album, released in 2011, received nominations for a Mercury Prize and a Brit Award, while her second and third albums, One Breath (2013) and Hunter (2018) were also nominated for Mercurys. 

The Joy Division-esque Is This All There Is appeared on an EP of the same name released by Calvi in March 2026. It also appeared as the closing theme to Joanna Hogg's 2021 drama, The Souvenir Part II, featuring Honor Swinton Byrne, daughter of Tilda Swinton.

Anna Calvi - Is This All There Is? (2026)

See also:

Music: Anna Calvi - Eliza (live, 2013)

Music: Anna Calvi - Fire (Bruce Springsteen cover, 2013)

Music: Anna Calvi & David Byrne - Strange Weather (2014)

Marti Friedlander

Remembering her emigration to New Zealand [in 1958, photographer] Marti Friedlander [1928-2016] wrote: 'I had no idea when I arrived I would find it so difficult. This outpost of England was thoroughly unfamiliar to me. The transition from city life to a suburban and rural existence was a revelation I was hardly prepared for... Nevertheless, being optimistic by nature, I set about adapting to the new life ahead of me. I never attempted to make pavlova, but I did preserve fruits and veges, bake bread, climb mountains, wade through rivers, get lost in the bush, and generally embrace a pioneering spirit of sorts. No matter how assimilated one appears on the surface, most migrants have a nostalgia for their own culture. Such ambivalence can seem threatening to the host country [but] I believe that a country's maturity is reflected in the way it regards its minorities, and welcomes the diversity in its midst.

Consequently, taking and making pictures was a crucial means of connecting with people and places in this new land. 'I probably would never have become a professional photographer if I had not shifted here,' Marti noted in her journal in the late 1970s. Photography enabled her to remake herself. Displacement and the loss of what she was most familiar with triggered her creativity. Not surprisingly, migration and the ways immigrants and travellers face new societies which are strange to them are primary themes in her work.

- Leonard Bell, Marti Friedlander, Auckland, 2009, p.151

Botanical tulip