Schuur: What a Difference a Voice Makes : The recordings of Dinah Washington inspired the vocalist in her own career. Her latest album includes two of her predecessor’s biggest pop hits.

Diane Schuur will never forget the first time she heard Dinah Washington, the superb jazz and blues singer of the ‘40s, ‘50s and early ‘60s.

“I was a child living in Tacoma, lying in my bunk bed late at night, listening to the radio when I heard her version of ‘What a Difference a Day Makes,’ ” recalled the 37-year-old singer, who will appear Monday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on a bill with Al Jarreau, Ray Charles, Peggy Lee and Rosemary Clooney as part of the sixth annual Singers’ Salute to the Songwriter.

“It was such a unique voice. It made me want to be a singer.”

Schuur still feels an affinity for the famed vocalist’s material and style, so much so that she recorded two of Washington’s biggest pop hits on her latest GRP Records release, “Pure Schuur”: “What a Difference a Day Makes,” a Top 10 single in 1959, and “Baby (You’ve Got What It Takes),” a duet with Brook Benton that reached the Top 10 a year later.

About her version of the latter song (which features a duet with Bobby Womack), Schuur said, “My inflection certainly had some of Dinah in it. I felt like her, though I felt we did an original version.”

The material on the album--including such tunes as “‘Deed I Do” and “Unforgettable”--was chosen by Schuur and her producer, Andre Fischer, to reach out to “the masses, but without losing my jazz audience,” she said.

The approach seems to have worked. “Pure Schuur” is No. 2 on the national contemporary-jazz charts and reached No. 148 on the pop charts--the strongest pop showing of any of her works.

Schuur, who lives in Seattle, describes the recording of “Pure Schuur” last year as having been much easier than the sessions for her earlier albums, because she was in much better physical condition after having dropped from more than 230 pounds to about 125 in a weight-loss program she began in January, 1989.

“I found I could work a lot longer hours, doing four songs in one eight- to nine-hour day,” said Schuur, who was blinded at birth in a hospital accident. “I feel like I got my life and my energy back. Before, I felt almost like an invalid.”

RIM SHOTS: Ernie Andrews, Sonny Craver, Betty Bryant, Larance Marable and Herman Riley are among those set to appear at “A Tribute to Dolo,” the eighth annual Charles (Dolo) Coker scholarship benefit concert, at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Musician’s Union auditorium in Hollywood. Proceeds will go to the Coker Foundation, which awards scholarships to full-time high school and college students.