Oakland jazz vocalist steps out of shadows
Kenny Washington, known for years in music circles, finally releases first album
The last person you’ll find singing the praises of Kenny Washington is the Oakland jazz vocalist himself. While his scat pyrotechnics and swooning, soulsteeped balladry grab attention on the bandstand, offstage he’s shy and diffident.
It’s a good thing that his musical peers are always ready to step in to offer a brisk flow of superlatives hailing his improvisational prowess and nonpareil musicianship. Wynton Marsalis, who hired Washington (and fellow Bay Area singer Paula West) for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s 2013 reprise of the trumpeter’s Pulitzer Prizewinning oratorio about slavery, “Blood on the Fields,” jumped at the opportunity to testify about his artistry.
Washington is “an improviser with impeccable intonation who brings depth to everything he does,” Marsalis told The Chronicle. “If you love music, you’ve got to love Kenny.”
Now jazz fans around the world have an opportunity to get familiar with Washington on his own terms. In August, at 63, he released his first studio album under his own name, titled — with gentle selfmockery — “What’s the Hurry.”
Left to his own devices, Washington admits that the project wouldn’t have gotten off the ground. But superfans such as Karen Van Leuven and Robert Bradsby refused to let him keep his talent on the down low. They’ve made a point of presenting Washington numerous times at their cozy Uptown Oakland venue the Sound Room, where he’ll celebrate the release of “What’s the Hurry” with a weekend of livestream concerts on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 18 and 19, accompanied by the album’s rhythm section featuring Bay Area musicians bassist Gary Brown and drummer Lorca Hart as well as Los Angeles pianist Josh Nelson.
“Robert and Karen, that’s why this CD exists,” Washington said. “It’s not because of me. I’d still be twiddling my thumbs, not getting anything done recordingwise. I got a big donation from a friend, Gail Sinquefield, and that sparked it off. Carey Williams agreed to help me out productionwise. That’s how it came about.”
One of L.A.’s most soughtafter accompanists, Nelson has worked with Washington widely over the past decade, most memorably at the Sound Room on New Year’s Eve 2015, when word arrived of Natalie Cole’s unexpected death. Nelson had toured with her for six years, and Washington immediately added several of her signature songs to the show in tribute.
Washington approached recording his debut solo album in much the same way, swinging effortlessly through a set of familiar standards. Rather than relying on detailed charts, he makes the songs his own through his interaction with his bandmates and his elastic phrasing.
“Kenny is one of the more unplanned singers I work with,” said Nelson, who has also performed extensively with top vocalists such as Sara Gazarek, Alicia Olatuja and Freda Payne. “I’m always a little nervous. He doesn’t have any charts or arrangements. He likes to keep things loose and get the feel of the room.”
A New Orleans native, Washington grew up in the Ninth Ward and got his start singing as a young teen in his church’s junior gospel choir. His father, a strict disciplinarian, didn’t let him out of the house much, limiting his exposure to live secular music. His interest in jazz was sparked his senior year by hearing the great Crescent City clarinetist Alvin Batiste perform at a high school assembly with a band that included the prodigious teenage brothers Branford and Wynton Marsalis.
Washington spent several years studying music at Xavier University while listening closely to Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Mel Tormé, who are deeply imprinted on his sound. After an eightyear stint in the Navy, mostly spent singing in a band, he processed out on Treasure Island in 1995 and decided to stay in the Bay Area.
While “What’s the Hurry” is Washington’s first studio project of his own, his talent has kept him in interesting company. He first got a taste of national attention back in the late 1990s when New York saxophonist Roy Nathanson recruited him for “Fire at Keaton’s Bar & Grill,” a jazz theater production that put him onstage in New York City with Elvis Costello, Deborah Harry and Nancy King. The project never found a deeppocket producer, but Six Degrees Records released an excellent cast album in 2000.
Bay Area saxophonist Michael O’Neill also showcased Washington on three critically hailed albums, most recently 2014’s “New Beginnings,” which sets his voice amid a lush mesh of horns. New York vibraphonist Joe Locke crafted an exquisite set of arrangements to feature Washington’s voice on 2010’s “For the Love of You,” and San Francisco bassistcomposer Marcus Shelby built his spiritually charged 2011 Porto Franco album, “Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” around Washington and Faye Carol.
He’s often game for an ambitious collaboration, but on his own, Washington keeps things as simple as possible. With “What’s the Hurry” he went into the studio just looking “to do songs that I love, working with a good band,” he said.
“As far as ambitions, that’s never been me. But since I’ve been in the Bay Area, things get a little better by the year,” he said. “Just meeting people along the way that appreciate me and want to see me do well — that’s what’s been lifting me.”
It may not be his plan, but with a voice as sweet and soulful as any male singer on the jazz scene, Washington is likely to find a whole new contingent in his corner.