| Jack Landron | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Juan Candido Washington y Landrón |
| Also known as | Jackie Washington |
| Born | June 2, 1938 Puerto Rico |
| Origin | Puerto Rico |
| Occupations | Folksinger, Songwriter, Actor |
Jack Landron is an Afro-Puerto Rican folksinger, songwriter, and actor. Because he had gone by "Jackie Washington" earlier in his career, he is often confused with the Canadian Jackie Washington, (1919–2009), who was a blues and jazz performer (nor is either to be confused with the fictional, female Jackie Washington played by Jenifer Lewis in the 1999 mockumentary TV-film Jackie's Back).
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Born Juan Candido Washington y Landrón on June 2, 1938, in Puerto Rico, he grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Roxbury. He studied at Emerson College as a Theater Arts major. As part of the Cambridge/Boston folk music scene in the early and mid-1960s, he released four albums on Vanguard—Jackie Washington (1962), Jackie Washington/2 (1963), Jackie Washington at Club 47 (1965), and Morning Song (1967); this last LP consisted entirely of original compositions and was his first with a band. [None of his albums has been released on CD but individual songs have appeared on anthologies. His sole single, for instance, "Why Won't They Let Me Be?" (1966), is included in Northern Soul's Classiest Rarities 2 (Kent, 2005).] The live album, Jackie Washington at Club 47, featuring a cover collage by Eric Von Schmidt, is most representative of his act as he had a lot to say between numbers—not only setting up the contexts of the songs but also relating personal anecdotes; indeed, he could easily have worked as a stand-up comedian, and he fully appreciated the early records of Bill Cosby. Vanguard, however, tried to groom him as a male counterpart to Joan Baez.
Coming home in the wee hours of 3 Dec 1962 Washington was set upon by the Boston Police resulting in a cause célèbre exposing racist police brutality.[1] [2] In the summer of 1964 he participated in Freedom Schools conducted in the South, and three of his performances are included in the double-CD anthology Freedom Is A Constant Struggle (Songs of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement) (1994). At one point he was Dr. Martin Luther King's personal assistant in Mississippi.[2] [3] "Esta Navidad" from his first album is included in the 1995 Vanguard compilation A Folksinger's Christmas.
His version of the traditional English nonsense song "Nottamun Town" Nottamun town was the tune and arrangement used by Bob Dylan as the basis for "Masters of War", [4]. [Clinton Heylin in Revolution In the Air (2009) rejects this idea as "patently absurd" (p. 116), but Jackie Washington, including "Nottamun Town", was released in December 1962, and The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, with "Masters of War", was released 27 May 1963; Dylan loved Washington's rendition, repeatedly requested he perform it, and asked Vanguard Records to give him a copy of Washington's debut album; Jean Ritchie, whose version Heylin and others give as Dylan's source, sings the song in a minor key but plays the accompaniment in major chords. Washington reset the melody to minor chords, and in the process changed it somewhat—Dylan liked this version and used it as the model for "Masters of War."] Washington's role in the song's transmission is acknowledged in Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968–2010 (Public Affairs, 2010, p. 410). Washington taught Joan Baez "There But For Fortune" by Phil Ochs, which provided Baez with her first appearance on the singles chart. (You can tell she learned it from him because he had made a lyric change; where Ochs had written "whose face is growing pale", Jackie, being black, had substituted "whose life has grown stale"—which is how Baez sings it.)
Originally managed by Manny Greenhill, Joan Baez's manager, Washington later did his own bookings.
On 25 July 1968 Jackie was master of ceremonies for a political rally supporting anti-Vietnam War presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy held at the Red Sox' Fenway Park. (It was at this event that poet Anne Sexton first performed with her band Anne Sexton and Her Kind.)
As the first performer to headline the Caffè Lena in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1960, Jackie was invited back 22 January 2010 to perform as part of an ongoing celebration of the club's 5oth anniversary, with Bill Staines as the opening act.[3][4]
He relocated to Manhattan to pursue acting under the name of Jack Landrón. One of his earliest performances was in the 1966 National Educational Television production of Tennessee Williams' one-act play Ten Blocks on the Camino Real (1948), starring Lotte Lenya and Martin Sheen; this has been available on DVD. He has done extensive work in commercials and continues to compose.
Landrón is a member of the board of the New York Screen Actors' Guild.
In the fall of 2007 he appeared in Maxwell Anderson’s Night Over Taos, directed by Estelle Parsons.[5].
In 2009 he relocated to West Hollywood, Los Angeles to pursue work in television and film.[5]
He has two daughters.