Jack Landron

Afro-Puerto Rican actor and musician Juan Candido Washington Landron was born in 1939 in Roxbury, MA. While attending Boston's Emerson College (as a theater arts major), he began singing in the local coffeehouses under the name Jackie Washington, quickly establishing himself as one of the most charismatic performers on the Cambridge folk scene during the advent of the folk revival in the early '60s. Solidly professional, and an excellent guitar player, Landron recorded several albums under the Jackie Washington name during this time, but never garnered the success of other Boston area folk artists of the day, although his arrangement of the ancient British riddle ballad called "Nottamon Town" was used as the source for Bob Dylan's "Masters of War." A committed activist, Landron traveled south to work for black voter registration, serving as a personal assistant to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for a time before returning east to New York to resume his acting career under the name Jack Landron. As an actor, Landron has worked with the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, the Negro Ensemble, the Caribbean American Repertory Theater, the Free Southern Theater and was a regular on NBC's Saturday morning television show The First Look. He continues to work as an actor in commercials, industrial films, and TV shows and has served as a board member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). Little of his music is still in print, although three of his songs ("Freedom School," "Song for Ben Chaney," "Father's Grave"), attributed to Jack Washington Landron, appear on the double CD called Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Songs of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide