I finished the Nadine Cohodas book “Queen: The Life and Music of Dinah Washington”, and while I regretfully say that I did not enjoy the book as a whole, the final pages did spark my curiosity. The book pretty much says that Ms. Washington’s estate has not received any royalties for her Mercury recordings since the 1960’s. Apparently, when she died, she was in debt to quite a few people. Mercury paid off certain debts and in return, Ms. Washington’s last (seventh) husband forego all future royalties. Now, I could have misread this and if so, please correct me. But if this is true, there have been some serious wrongs done here. Not only did Ms. Washington make most of her recordings with Mercury, but in recent years there has been a renewed interest in her music, especially with the release of the movie “Bridges of Madison County” from which royalties were paid on one of the three Washington songs found on the soundtrack. It just seems to me like the family of Ms. Washington, especially her sons, have really been given the shaft. People make bad business deals all the time. In the past, many jazz musicians have sold masterpieces away for a pittance as well as had people who were not contributors to their music slap their names on the songs so that they may benefit from the record sales. The sad thing in this case is that this deal was made after Ms. Washington had passed. She may have been loose with her money, but I seriously doubt she would have agreed to forego all future revenue derived from sales of her records to pay off a what? $25,000 debt. I’m not sure which company now owns those Mercury recordings, but whomever they are, they should be ashamed of themselves. Like I said, I could be wrong on this, but there seems to be a den of thieves out there, and one can only hope that some day they will receive their comeuppance.