Ledisi released "Nobody Knows the Way I Feel This Morning" on Friday (Sept 18) through Candid Records. It is the first preview of a deluxe edition of For Dinah, her tribute to Dinah Washington, which the label has slated for October 9 with four added songs. Tom and Pearl Delaney wrote the blues in the early 1920s, and Ledisi's recording follows versions by Alberta Hunter, Washington and Aretha Franklin.

The song was left off the original eight-track For Dinah, which Candid released on October 3, 2025, with Christian McBride and Rex Rideout producing. Ledisi kept it in her live show instead. In June, she sang it when her For Dinah concert opened the 40th-anniversary season of SummerStage at Rumsey Playfield in Central Park, in a set that also carried "Caravan" and "This Bitter Earth."

The studio version runs 3:52 and was cut with a small rhythm section. Brandon Coleman plays both piano and organ, Brandon Rose is on bass and Lyndon Rochelle is on drums, while Ray Bardani recorded and mixed the track. None of the three players appears in the credits of the original album, where guests included Gregory Porter and guitarist Paul Jackson Jr.

The chain starts in New York on December 22, 1924. That day Hunter, a Memphis-born singer working under the name Josephine Beatty, recorded "Nobody Knows the Way I Feel Dis Mornin'" with the Red Onion Jazz Babies. The studio group was built around Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet and Lil Hardin, and the record was issued in 1925.

Hunter's last chapter also played out in New York. In 1977, at 82, she returned to performing at The Cookery in Greenwich Village, and a two-week booking turned into a six-year engagement. She died on Roosevelt Island on October 17, 1984, at 89.

Washington, who gave herself the title Queen of the Blues, recorded the song for Roulette on Back to the Blues. The album was cut in 1962 and released in 1963 with arrangements by Fred Norman. Her version stretches to 8:40, more than twice the length of the new one. She died in Detroit on December 14, 1963, at 39.

Less than two months later, Franklin went into Columbia Recording Studios in New York to make Unforgettable: A Tribute to Dinah Washington. She was 21 and, like Hunter, had been born in Memphis before growing up in Detroit. Robert Mersey produced and arranged the sessions. Columbia released the album on February 18, 1964, with "Nobody Knows the Way I Feel This Morning" as the sixth track.

Ledisi, who was born in New Orleans, has now made two albums honoring women who came before her. Ledisi Sings Nina, her 2021 Nina Simone tribute, reached No. 2 on Billboard's Classical Crossover Albums chart and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. She won her first Grammy that same year for "Anything for You" in Best Traditional R&B Performance.

Her contemporary R&B work has kept moving alongside the tributes. She sang "Lift Every Voice and Sing" at Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans before launching her Love You Too Tour. The Crown then earned 2026 Grammy nominations for Best R&B Album and, for "Love You Too," Best Traditional R&B Performance. In August she appeared on "I Belong To You," the lead single from Boney James's 20th studio album, released the same day Anthony Hamilton put out his duet with Lindsey Webster.

Ledisi has described Washington's influence in personal terms. "She gave me permission to move freely, create freely, be a woman in leadership, wear and say what I want," she said when she introduced the album in 2025. In February she followed it with "Teach Me Tonight" and a Village Studio Session take on "What a Difference a Day Made."

"Nobody Knows the Way I Feel This Morning" is the first of the deluxe edition's four new songs to arrive. The full set is slated for October 9, six days after the first anniversary of the original release.