By Walter Price
I picked up the paper this Saturday morning and saw some of the most depressing news this Holiday Season of 1999. Mr. Grover Washington Jr., dead at 56. The article read "jazz-funk artist" Grover Washington Jr.
Grover was much, much more. He was simply a jazz artist and one of the greats. The problem for Grover was that he was a contemporary artist and he hit big with crossover hits like "Mr. Magic" and "Just the Two of Us." This is heresy in the purist jazz orthodoxy camp. While more everyday people knew Grover better than many "pure" jazz artists, he was constantly suffering the slings and arrows of being labeled "sell out", "pop-smooth jazz artist", "jazz-funk artist", and not a serious jazz saxophone player like Sonny or a Joshua Redman.
Well, Grover to me was a very serious and talented saxophone player. He along with other contemporaries made me interested in jazz. Without Grover I wouldn't know Parker, Coltrane, Gordon and many other jazz legends. A few of us got into contemporary jazz before we got into Sonny Stitt, Steve Grossman, Lester Young, Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges, Cannonball, or Art Pepper. Some jazz fans have this continued territorial problem of listening to artists like Grover and appreciating it as jazz.
Grover, I love you. You didn't have to always make a "Then and Now" and an "All My Tomorrows" to get praise from me. I'm going to listen to just a few of your great tunes today like East River Drive, Passion Flower, Jamaica, Reed Seed, Bright Moments, Inside Moves, A Secret Place Strawberry Moon, your versions of Take Five and Soulful Strut and of course Let It Flow.
While my brethren in the pure jazz circles will lightly lay praise upon thee, I will hold you Mr. Washington in the highest esteem as a jazz artist, performer, and master at his instrument. I saw you at the Montreal jazz festival several years ago and was just amazed at the performance. I'm sure the solos and improvisational moments you created at the show could have been easily copied by any "serious" jazz saxophonists of the time, but I was impressed and the audience was definitely satisfied. You might have even created some enthusiasm for jazz music that day and subsequently created some jazz fans from jazz listeners.
Thank you Mr. Washington for sharing some of your great music and performances with the world. You will be missed by me as one of the best JAZZ artists ever. You Mr. Washington was a credit to everything about jazz and should receive all the accolades of any great jazz artist. If the tributes to you, Mr. Washington do come, they will most certainty now be depressingly overdue. Goodbye Mr. Magic.
