Dinah Washington - This Bitter Earth

This song was released in 1960.  It has a nice blend of strings and a bluesy voice.  

It is not a toe tapping song.


https://youtu.be/BmEhO1OiEkY

A beautiful song.

The writer of this song was Clyde Otis who was born to a poor family in rural Mississippi and served in the Marines during WWII. The singer was Dinah Washington (born Ruth Lee Jones) who became "the most popular black female recording artist of the '50s" before dying from an overdose of pain-killers just three years after recording this song. She was 39 years old - the same age I am now.

As I write this I'm watching a small squirrel at the feeder, it is one of the few I can individually identify because it is a runt with a lame right leg that it drags along. It comes to feed in the 'off-hours' when the blue-jays and other squirrels are gone. The squirrel keeps looking nervously at the corner of the house because a large black Shepard lies there, not realizing the sleeping dog can rarely stand without human assistance.

Upstairs, amongst a scatter of parched plants, there is a single rose in full red bloom.  Every March it returns to signal the end of winter. It is a gift from my mother that I do not remember receiving. I don't know how it has survived all these years - but it has.

This bitter-sweet earth.