By Ben Joravsky
The play opens in 1959, when Dinah’s already a star. But for her sisters the story begins in Alabama, where their parents, Alice and Ollie Jones, were raised. “Dinah was the only one of us born in Alabama,” says Dukes. “That was in 1924. Her real name is Ruthie Lee Jones. She was named after our grandfather Rufus.”
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When Dukes was born, in 1944, Ruth was 20. She’d already changed her name to Dinah Washington and was a rising star. By 1947 she was the “Queen of the Jukeboxes,” with a number one hit–“I Want to Cry”–and a large enough following that she could make almost $15,000 a performance. In 1948 she bought her mother and siblings a home in Lawndale, at 1518 S. Trumbull, which is where Alice Jones lived almost until she died, in 1992.
In the play Alice Jones appears in several flashbacks as a mean and narrow-minded fundamentalist who cruelly torments her daughter. “They had their fights,” says Dukes, “but who doesn’t? I didn’t always get along with my mother. I don’t always get along with my son, as much as I love him. He tells me, ‘Mama, when are you gonna let me grow up?’ I say, ‘When I decide to.’ That’s the way it is with parents and children.”
“To a lot of people, Dinah Washington’s a star,” says Dukes, “but to me she’s my generous big sister. Because of her I got to do so many things. I grew up in the house she bought us and went to college with the money she gave us. My mama used to say, ‘You’re just like Ruth,’ meaning we’re strong willed. But Dinah was more generous than me. God bless my sister, she was generous until the day she died.”
They liked most of what they saw, though they didn’t approve of the way their mother was portrayed. “I knew her mother–she wasn’t like that,” says Eugene. “But I know this is show business. People will take that creative license.”
