Jackie Washington

Jackie Washington has had such a long career, and in so many musical idioms, that it's not surprising that he reached his eighties as a fairly enigmatic figure. Across 50 years, he's crossed paths professionally with everyone from Duke Ellington, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee to Bob Dylan. Born Jackie Washington Landron in 1919 to a family of West Indian and Puerto Rican descent in Hamilton, Ontario, he worked at various times under both names, performing music as Jackie Washington, and as Jackie Ladron when he worked as an actor, his second career. He grew up in Hamilton's sizable black community, and was performing music from age five. He was later a member of the Washington Brothers -- consisting of Jackie and his siblings Ormsby, Harold, and Doc -- whose sound was heavily influenced by that of the Mills Brothers during their eight years together through the end of the 1930s. Washington left music as a profession during the 1940s, though by the end of the decade he was working as a disc jockey, and was singing in nightclubs during the 1950s. In the early '60s he made the leap into a new musical idiom when he became part of the folk revival. He sang blues, which was a short jump to folk music, and with his strong singing and guitar skills, and as a black Canadian, Washington was able to fill the role of a down-north folk-bluesman, a kind of Canadian Josh White. He was signed to Vanguard Records in the early '60s, and began performing extensively in the United States, especially in New York's Greenwich Village at venues such as Gerdes' Folk City and other friendly havens for the music. One of the songs in his repertory was a version of "Nottamun Town," a mountain song recorded and written by Jean Ritchie that he adapted musically to a minor key into his own style,...