From the Archives: Grover Washington Jr.; Saxophonist Helped to Popularize Jazz-Fusion

Grover Washington Jr., one of the most popular saxophonists working in the jazz-fusion idiom, died Friday evening after collapsing at a television taping in New York. He was pronounced dead at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital. Washington was 56.

Washington had played four songs that were to run on CBS’ “The Saturday Early Morning Show” before collapsing. The cause of his death was not immediately known.

One of the first jazz musicians to fuse jazz with various other forms of music, Washington often was overlooked by jazz purists who saw his success with this kind of music as perverting the traditional jazz form.

But Washington was an excellent player with a wide-ranging ability. He mastered the complexities of three different types of saxophone: tenor, alto and soprano. And despite the predominance of pop-oriented tunes at his concerts, the audience also would hear some wonderful jazz playing.

Born in Buffalo, N.Y., Washington came from a musical family. His father was a tenor saxophonist and his mother sang in a choir. One of his brother’s was an organist with church choirs, and his youngest brother, Darryl, became a professional drummer, playing with the organist Richard “Groove” Holmes.

His father gave Washington his first saxophone at age 10, but Washington’s first love was classical music.

“My early lessons were on the saxophone, then it was the piano, the drum and percussion family, and the bass guitar,” he told an interviewer some years ago. He found the time to study all the instruments because he knew from an early age that music was his calling.

He played in the high school band before graduating and leaving Buffalo for a career in music. He first played for a group called the Four Clefs. After the band split up in 1963, Washington was drafted into the Army.

After his discharge, Washington continued his study of music, listening to John Coltrane, Joe Henderson and Oliver Nelson and playing with a number of small bands in Philadelphia and Washington. He got his first break playing in the band of saxophonist/organist Charles Earland who, coincidentally, died Dec. 11 of a heart attack after playing an engagement in Kansas City.

Washington’s jump to fame came in 1970, when he was asked to fill in for another player who had been arrested on a 2-year-old driving charge. The album, “Inner City Blues,” was released under Washington’s name and became a hit, selling hundreds of thousands of copies while breaking down the barrier between jazz and pop.

“My big break was blind luck,” Washington later said.

Washington developed his jazz-fusion style, which is basically jazz improvisation over a pop or rock beat, and he found steady work as a sideman on albums by Bob James, Randy Weston and Don Sebesky.

His 1975 album “Mister Magic” was the first of his many gold and platinum records. His most successful album, “Winelight,” made it to the fifth spot on U.S. record charts. Vocals by Bill Withers on the song “Just the Two of Us” helped fuel the album’s success.

Washington’s style played a role in shaping the “smooth jazz” sound of the 1990s, but he continually showed himself capable of working beyond that genre.

Other career sidelights included playing at President Clinton’s 50th birthday celebration at Radio City Music Hall in 1996. He also played in a jazz and blues jam session with Clinton in 1993 after a White House concert celebrating jazz.

Associated Press contributed to this story.

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