Dinah and Brook
With Hendricks' talents on the radar at last, they were drawn upon more and more as the 1950s progressed.
Soon after arriving in New York, he had met Dinah Washington, then an up and coming vocalist. By 1958, she was an established star and she asked Hendricks to arrange and conduct. They enjoyed several chart hits, the most enduring being What a Difference a Day Makes, which reached number 4 in the United States R & B charts and number 8 in the US pop charts in 1959 and which remains well-known through TV commercials and radio airplay to this day. Unforgettable and This Bitter Earth are also notable hits. Hendricks arranged and conducted nearly 100 songs for Dinah from February 1959 to January 1961, but today most of them are considered to be mediocre and boring, compared to Dinah's jazz/blues-oriented recordings until 1958.
Even more successful were the light-hearted duets which Hendricks arranged for Washington and Brook Benton in 1960. Baby (You've Got What It Takes) made number 1 in the United States R & B charts and number 5 in the US pop charts, earning over $1 million, whilst A Rockin' Good Way (To Mess Around and Fall in Love) also made number 1 in the United States R & B charts and number 7 in the US pop charts. Both recordings were also notable for featuring a young Joe Zawinul on piano.
Hendricks, in fact, had an even closer musical relationship with Benton than the one he enjoyed with Washington, for, in addition to arranging many of the popular baritone's recordings, he also co-wrote numerous songs with him, often together with Otis. The Hendricks-Otis-Benton composition It's Just a Matter of Time, arranged by Hendricks and performed by Benton, went to number 3 in the US pop charts in 1959 and became a country music standard, with new interpretations reaching number 1 in the United States country charts twice: first in 1970, sung by Sonny James, and again in 1984, courtesy of Randy Travis. The song remains one of the most-licensed compositions of the 20th century.
Other successful arrangements by Hendricks for Benton include Thank You Pretty Baby, Kiddio, Fools Rush In and The Boll Weevil Song.
Read more about this topic: Belford Hendricks
Famous quotes containing the words dinah and/or brook:
“Now Kitty, let’s consider who it was that dreamed it all. This is a serious question, my dear, and you should not go on licking your paw like that—as if Dinah hadn’t washed you this morning! You see, Kitty, it must have been either me or the Red King.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“Our life runs down in sending up the clock.
The brook runs down in sending up our life.
The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
And there is something sending up the sun.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)