Sign-up to our e-mail newsletter and stay up to date on new recordings, our weekly special sales and promotions!
Albert Washington, Jr.
Appearances
![Satch Plays Fats: The Music of Fats Waller [Bonus Tracks]](/cache/JS/e2/130x130_on-sale_e20801zh2ls.png)
Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller only worked together twice, briefly in 1925 in Erskine Tate's band and four years later in the New York [more]
- List Price: $16.99
- Member Price: $11.98
Of less importance than the concurrent release of The Best of Louis Armstrong: The Hot Five and Seven Recordings is Satch Blows the Blues, since it only distills the great [more]
- List Price: $16.99
- Member Price: $11.98
Draw up a list of some of the top jazz artists of all time, and the legend featured in this recording would likely be at the top of that list. Louis [more]
- List Price: $16.98
- Member Price: $11.98
This four-CD set does its best to summarize Louis Armstrong's career during 1923-1934, reissuing 81 of his finest recordings. The problem is that virtually [more]
- Member Price: $59.98
In conjunction with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns' ten-part 2000 PBS special, Columbia/Legacy and Verve teamed up to issue a special series of reissues covering much of [more]
- List Price: $16.99
- Member Price: $11.98
"Armstrong jovially balanced his calling as a musician with his job as an entertainer, applying his virtuosity while showing audiences a good time." —New York Times
In conjunction with the release of Ken Burns' ten-part, 19-hour epic PBS documentary {#Jazz}, Columbia issued 22 single-disc compilations devoted to jazz's most significant [more]
- List Price: $16.99
- Member Price: $11.98
While Louis Armstrong didn't invent jazz, he certainly shaped it in his own image, personalizing it, popularizing it, and giving it a template to follow into the modern [more]
- List Price: $16.98
- Member Price: $11.98
This 23-track compilation contains alternate takes of many of Armstrong's signature songs from this period on one album. The songs include
- List Price: $16.98
- Member Price: $15.28
Its title aside (which suggests that Hoagy Carmichael was a some distant forerunner of Jackson Browne or Dar Williams, a case that would be [more]
- List Price: $28.98
- Member Price: $26.13
- List Price: $39.98
- Member Price: $35.98
Biography
- Styles
- Early Jazz
- Instrument(s)
The lengthy career of this classic jazz saxophonist and clarinetist began in the American Midwest, and swing biographer John Chilton last sighted Albert Washington holding forth with a band in Guadalajara, Mexico, circa the late '70s. Washington's father was a guitarist who worked in Omaha prior to moving his family to Chicago. Young Albert, often reduced to an Al in credits, began playing piano in 1912 and switched to reeds several years later. His first teachers included O.K. Schnal and Natty Dominique, the latter credited with hipping him to the fine points of improvisation. Further influence came from one of the many musical families associated with the New Orleans jazz scene: Washington played both soprano sax and clarinet in Al Simeon's Hot Six while studying with Omer Simeon.
During the '20s he worked with such Chicago bands as Al Wynn's Paradise Night Owls, Detroit Shannon's band, and Louis Armstrong & His Stompers. One of his attributes was an obvious ease moving around the woodwind family, playing alto and tenor with Armstrong and then combining the tenor with the oboe upon joining Erskine Tate's reed section. Chicago continued to serve as his base in the early '30s. Following two years of touring with Armstrong, Washington moved to New York City and played with both Fletcher Henderson and Charlie Turner's Arcadians. The great pianist and singer Fats Waller assumed leadership of the latter combo by the mid-'30s and Washington stayed put. His compatibility with both Armstrong and Waller served the reedman well when he took part in the memorable Satch Plays Fats recordings in the '50s.
By then Washington had returned to Chicago and picked up a degree in music following studies in both piano and theory at Roosevelt University. He eased into a new career as a music teacher while keeping bandstand options open with leaders such as Floyd Campbell and Eddie King. Washington continued combining teaching in the Chicago public schools with gigging well into the '60s and '70s, his Windy City performing collaborators including Ben Branch, Russell Crider, Ged Hunter, and Big John Woodsit. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide
©2010 The Jazz Store. All Rights Reserved.
The Jazz Store - 1710 Highway 35 - Oakhurst, NJ 07755