Hip Hop Got Nothin' on Jazz...

Cohodas casts light on Washington's reputation for toughness. We see her at work playing rough in order to maintain her personal and artistic standards and to protect other African-American artists from racial prejudice. She would hush up a musician who overplayed or scold a member of the audience who disrupted her show. After she was successful, she became "the boss in the studio" and once halted a recording session when she saw that the entire orchestra was white. She resumed the next day, when black musicians were included. During one performance in Las Vegas, the hotel pit boss lowered Washington's volume to satisfy a high roller from the South who didn't like her singing; Washington left the stage, walked through the casino, and told the boss, loudly enough for her audience to hear, "Motherfucker, I'm going to turn that [sound] back where it belongs, and if you touch it, I am going to break your fuckin' ass."
David Hajdu, New York Review of Books