December 2001

From the Inside Out
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By Chris M. Slawecki

December 17, 1999 had been such a wonderful evening. I had just escorted my date to her employer’s annual year-end holiday party, a delightful semi-formal faux Monte Carlo night at the prestigious Radnor Hunt Club, amongst the landed aristocracy of suburban Philadelphia. The evening spilled over with elegant surroundings, gourmet food, fine music and dancing, and excellent bourbon. But the time had come to go. As I steered the car down the winding driveway, I turned on the radio, already tuned by my date to Philly’s “smooth Jazz” station. The smooth soulful sounds of Grover Washington, Jr.’s sax soothed the December night air, which was otherwise perfectly black, still and chilled. That first number segued into another song by Grover, and then another; “East River Drive,” a gliding groove and consummate driving tune, was one of them, I’m sure. The night continued to flow. It was perfect. At the song’s conclusion came the DJ’s voiceover: Earlier that evening, Grover Washington Jr. had collapsed after recording several songs at CBS’ New York television studio for broadcast on the next morning’s edition of “The Early Show”; he was taken to St. Luke’s – Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead from a fatal heart attack at the age of 56.

The Sound of Philadelphia. Philadelphia has been home to many great Jazz musicians. The city has even treated some of these musicians kindly. But it’s rare when a musician loves a city, and a city loves back, the way that Philadelphia and Grover Washington Jr. cared for each other.

Grover wasn’t even from Philly – he was born in Buffalo – but he was ours. He moved to the city in the 1960s, after serving in the Army (playing in the same Army band as Billy Cobham). Like many jazz musicians who emerged from the City of Brotherly Love, GWJ’s musical education included playing alongside the great Hammond B-3 organ players who called that city home, Johnny “Hammond” Smith, Leon Spencer, and Charles Earland among them. His recorded his first professional session in 1970, as a soloist on Earland’s Living Black album when Earland’s regular saxophonist couldn’t make the date. Prestige Records has just released Discovery: The First Recordings, a compilation of GWJ’s session work for the label from 1970-’71, his first professional work.

That Earland gig proved to be a good omen: GWJ’s first session as a leader wasn’t supposed to be his record, either. In 1971, producer Creed Taylor set up a date for saxophonist Hank Crawford; Crawford couldn’t make the date, however, and Taylor gave the session to GWJ instead. Inner City Blues pulsed with the heart of the Marvin Gaye anthem of its title track; its soulful and funky R&B, laced with inventive Jazz solos, effectively foreshadowed GWJ’s career path. GWJ was officially on the map. (To Taylor’s credit, it would have been a solid vehicle for Crawford’s R&B style, too.)

From that point GWJ seemed to work his craft almost constantly, performing and recording and performing charity or educational work, and he mastered the tenor, alto and soprano saxophones in the course of releasing several albums for the Motown and Kudu labels. "I've really worked on my sound," he once said. "I've tried to make it a personal sound. I want it to feel like there's a vocalist in there singing lyrics." Winelight, his 1980 debut for Elektra, was nominated for two Grammy Awards: Best Jazz Fusion Recording and Best R&B Song for “Just The Two of Us” with vocalist Bill Withers.

A City’s Favorite Son. In the 1980s, Washington frequently played the national anthem before Philadelphia 76ers home games while his good friend Julius “Dr. J.” Erving was a member of the team. The “Dr.” and the saxophonist found in each other smooth, gracious kindred spirits, and Winelight included a song for his friend, “Let It Flow (For Dr. J”). The Sixers weren’t undefeated when he played the anthem – but the team, the crowd, and the musician would all juice each other up and at times the team, which claimed the 1983 championship, could seem and feel invincible.

GWJ supported the city in other ways that might have been less visible but more important. He was a frequent guest instructor at The Settlement Music School, the largest music education, therapy, and outreach institution of its kind in the country, founded in Philadelphia nearly a century ago, and at the Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz & Performing Arts, from which emerged, under GWJ’s tutelage, the small ensemble Pieces of a Dream. Perhaps most importantly, he established the “Protect the Dream” Foundation, which provides funding for educational and musical resources and tools to public and nonprofit institutions dedicated to the music education of young Philadelphians. He also toured the country as an instructor for the NARAS education program “Grammy in the Schools” and as traveling instructor for Harmon International’s “How To Listen Tour.”

He also regularly performed with Peter Nero and his hometown Philly Pops. Nero recalled, upon GWJ’s passing, that, “He was a great role model for kids through his work bringing music to schools,” said Nero. “He was a rare human being and a rare artist.”

“As a person he was the sweetest guy in the world, so humble for such a giant of a talent, which is a rare quality in this profession to find in a person.”

A New Discovery. Discovery: The First Recordings (Prestige) compiles tracks from GWJ’s first professional sessions, recorded between the fall of 1970 and the fall of ’71. These tracks – previously released on titles by Earland (Living Black!), Spencer (Louisiana Slim), Smith (What’s Goin’ On?) and guitarist Boogaloo Joe Jones (No Way! and What It Is) – capture the sound and feel of soul-funk-jazz as this music grooved and bopped from the late 1960s into the early 1970s. They also present GWJ mixing it up in more rough n’ tumble formats and styles than the ones in which he later became commercially successful.

GWJ performs exclusively on tenor, except for the ballad “Our Love Will Never Die” on which he plays flute. Though his playing on Discovery never quite gets to gutbucket honking, both his sound and his approach seem more guttural, sharp-edged and nas-stay than the later work that made him famous. Throughout the latter part of his career, you almost never heard him put the squeeze on a slow moanin’ twelve-bar blues such as “Fadin’,” where his tenor is almost Texas rugged, or hanging as funky and tough as he does in “Between The Sheets” and “Sunshine Alley,” or breathing the fire (as does the rest of Boogaloo Joe Jones’ ensemble) that smokes this blistering arrangement of “I Feel The Earth Move.” The final cut, a live and loose romp through “Killer Joe,” is…well, a killer. The rhythm sections, particularly guitarists Jones, Melvin Sparks and Maynard Parker (both longstanding Prestige sidemen), make Discovery a solid pocket introduction to “in the pocket” Grover Washington Jr.