Jackie Washington

at Club 47

Vanguard Records VSD-79172 1965 12" 33rpm (USA)

Born in 1919 in Hamilton, Ontario, Jackie Washington 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. Washington's debut album as a blues artist, Blues and Sentimental, was released on the Knight II (the name of a local coffeehouse where Washington regularly performed) label in 1976. He played at folk and blues festivals throughout Canada -- never venturing south of the border into the United States, where his grandparents had been slaves -- and had a total of 1,200 songs at his fingertips. The totality of Washington's work also transcended the the folk and blues scene, bringing him into contact across the decades with Duke Ellington, Clark Terry, and Lionel Hampton, among other jazz giants, as well as Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and Lonnie Johnson in blues. He continued to perform and record blues over the years, including a number of albums released by the Borealis label -- Where Old Friends Meet (with Mose Scarlett and Ken Whiteley, 1991), Keeping Out of Mischief (1995), Midnight Choo Choo (1998), We'll Meet Again (with Scarlett and Whiteley, 1999), Sitting on a Rainbow (with Scarlett and Whiteley, 2003) -- and he was the subject of the 1996 biographical book More Than a Blues Singer: Jackie Washington Tells His Story. Washington took on the role of elder statesman in Canada's jazz, blues, and folk music communities -- especially in Ontario -- and, in his eighties, still performed occasionally in the early 2000s, although he was in poor health and suffered from diabetes (losing a leg to the disease). In 2002 Jackie Washington was inducted into the Canadian Jazz and Blues Hall of Fame. He died in June 2009 in his lifelong home of Hamilton at the age of 89.

 Tracklist
A1   Babe It Ain't No Lie  
A2   It Isn't Nice  
A3   Freedom School  
A4   Father's Grave  
A5   Sugaree  
A6   Malaguena Salerosa  
A7   Man Of Constant Sorrow  
B1   Loving Hannah  
B2   Everyday Dirt  
B3   Yaravi  
B4   Bamboo  
B5   Sweet Potato  
B6   Song Of Ben Chaney  
B7   Freedom Songs  
B8   Song Of Peace

Condition:  LP is Very Good in a paper inner sleeve in a picture sleeve that is Very Good

A Note About Shipping To The U.S.
We are located in Canada, but have registered ourselves on eBay.com instead of eBay.ca because it gives us significantly better global exposure.  The problem with this is that eBay wants us to charge shipping appropriate to US, where media mail and other options make for fairly reasonable delivery costs. We tried it for a while but ended up losing money on shipping or having to cancel the orders because we couldn't afford to ship for those rates. To manage this we have set the US shipping to run a calculator based on an American location (we chose Plattsburgh as fairly close) and charging according to UPS pricing.  This avoids the cancellation issue, but appears to the buyer to be a prohibitive shipping cost and misrepresents the shipping as being only expedited. If you give us your postal code we will see if we can offer a more reasonable option, but generally we can get a single LP by air to most places in the continental US for $11, a few bucks less for ground.
Thanks for shopping Sir Helmitt,
Jeff Green, e-sales

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