The title of this blahg is not a rhetorical question.
I would really like an answer to this question. A couple of days ago I received a package in the mail from Amazon and it was a product I don’t remember ordering. Inside was a CD by an artist of whom I had no knowledge and it caused me to question why I purchased the product. Read on.
The CD in question “Dakota Staton – Five Classic Albums”. 
Who the heck is Dakota Staton and why did I buy this CD? I don’t know or rather I don’t remember. I went back to my Amazon account and I did indeed order the CD but I can’t recall why. I thought maybe I had read about her or I saw the album somewhere but nothing springs to mind. I checked my phone to see if I took a picture of an LP I had seen in a thrift store to see if it might be something I’d like. I’ve done this before. Unfortunately, there was no corresponding photo on my phone. So today, I searched my browser history and here’s what I found as it relates to Dakota Staton:
You’ll have to click on the above image to get a larger view but the bottom one is the oldest listing and it says:
“dakota staton” time to swing – Google Search
After that, I viewed a YouTube video of the album “Time To Swing” and then went to Amazon and looked at Dakota Staton compact discs. Again, I have no recollection of any of that but at least it helps solve the mystery. I obviously saw “Dakota Staton – Five Classic Albums” as a good value and decided to order it. I just wish that any of this sounded familiar. I’m thinking I saw the album “Time To Swing” in a thrift store and then decided to research it. At least that’s what my browser history reveals. Here’s what the LP looks like:
I don’t remember looking at the YouTube video of the above album and I’ve only listened to about 14 songs off the CD. Before I get into offering up any samples of Dakota Staton’s singing, I want to post some information about her. Here’s what I researched today from Wikipedia:
Dakota Staton (June 3, 1930 – April 10, 2007) was an American jazz vocalist who found international acclaim with the 1957 No. 4 hit “The Late, Late Show”. She was also known by the Muslim name Aliyah Rabia for a period due to her conversion to Islam as interpreted by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
Born in the Homewood neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she attended George Westinghouse High School, and studied music at the Filion School of Music in Pittsburgh. Later she performed regularly in the Hill District, a jazz hotspot, as a vocalist with the Joe Westray Orchestra, a popular Pittsburgh orchestra. She next spent several years in the nightclub circuit in such cities as Detroit, Indianapolis, Cleveland and St. Louis. While in New York, she was noticed singing at a Harlem nightclub called the Baby Grand by Dave Cavanaugh, a producer for Capitol Records. She was signed and released several singles, her success leading her to win Down Beat magazine’s “Most Promising Newcomer” award in 1955. In 1958, Staton wed Talib Dawud, a black Antigua-born Ahmadi Muslim, a jazz trumpeter and noted critic of Elijah Muhammad. She subsequently converted to Islam and used the name Aliyah Rabia for some time. The marriage ultimately ended in divorce.
She released several critically acclaimed albums in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including: The Late, Late Show (1957), whose title track was her biggest hit, In the Night (1958), a collaboration with pianist George Shearing, Dynamic! (1958) and Dakota at Storyville (1962), a live album recorded at the Storyville jazz club in Boston. In the mid-1960s Staton moved to England, where she recorded the album Dakota ′67. Returning to the US in the early 1970s, she continued to record semi-regularly, her recordings taking an increasingly strong gospel and blues influence. She suffered a stroke in 1999, after which her health deteriorated. Staton died in New York City aged 76 in 2007.
Very skimpy on details but it appears she had some fame and notoriety. Sometimes a singer becomes famous for more than just their singing through their actions or possibly acting in television or the movies. With Dakota Staton, the music is the thing. I’ve listened to the album “The Late Late Show” as it was the first twelve tracks on the first CD of this two CD set. The Wikipedia entry states she “found international acclaim with the 1957 No. 4 hit “The Late, Late Show.” That’s a good place to start.
Another song from “The Late, Late Show” that I really enjoyed was the song “Give Me The Simple Life”:
Readers of this blahg will recall that I once posted a version of “The Simple Life” sung by Mel Tormé. Here’s Mel’s version for comparison:
Mel’s rendition comes from the album “An Evening with George Shearing & Mel Tormé.” I offered it up as a comparison to Dakota Staton’s version but now I’ll go further and present a live version by Dakota Staton to compare to Mel’s version. This comes from her CD “Live at Milestones.” The album was recorded Live at Milestones, Buffalo, New York, November 20, 1986. This live version is almost 30 years after her recorded version on “The Late, Late Show”:
The two other songs I have heard from my “Dakota Staton – Five Classic Albums” CD are the first two tracks from the 1958 album “Dynamic”, “Let Me Off Uptown” and “Night Mist.” Here they are from YouTube:
If you want to hear a completely different arrangement version of “Let Me Off Uptown”, check out this version from her 1972 album “Madame Foo-Foo”:
That’s funked up!
Okay, so I took a break from this blahg because I had to go to an appointment and do some running around. I finished listening to all of CD 1 and that included the rest of the tracks from her album “Dynamic!” and the first 6 tracks from her next album “More Than The Most!” One song from that last album really stuck out for me. It was a nice swinging version of the song “East Of The Sun”:
I had only ever heard Frank Sinatra sing that song. He recorded a version in the 1940s with Tommy Dorsey and then rerecorded it in 1961 for his tribute album “I Remember Tommy.” It’s Sinatra’s 1961 version I’ll offer up to compare to Dakota Staton’s 1959 version
So, my thoughts so far on Dakota Staton? She has a great voice. Part of it reminds me of Marge Dodson. I had picked up an album by Ms. Dodson at a thrift store and wrote about the album and some of her other music in a blahg with the strange title, AYE AYE ITUNES, THIS CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT. One of the songs I posted about at that time was the tune “This Can’t Be Love” from her second album “New Voice in Town”:
Yes, there’s a Marge Dodson quality to Dakota Staton but certainly enough of her own style to make her more than stand out.
I wanted to close out this blahg with some videos of Dakota Staton performing live. Here’s a video of her singing the song “Broadway”, which incidentally is the first track on CD 1 of this CD set I didn’t remember ordering. This time she’s live in 1965:
The following video contains an early version of her singing the song “I Hear Music” accompanied by George Shearing on piano and then a later live version of her scatting and singing on a song I don’t recognize.
If you search on YouTube you will find other live versions of her over the years. The singing is great and I don’t regret ordering a CD I don’t remember ordering. WHY DID I BUY THIS CD? I think I must have seen the album in a thrift store and then researched it and decided to buy a CD set that gave me a really good sampling of her music. Another answer to the question to WHY DID I BUY THIS CD?…BECAUSE IT’S THAT GOOD!