Jackie Washington/Jack Landron

Jack Landron is an Afro-Puerto Rican folksinger, songwriter, and actor based in New York City. Because he had gone by "Jackie Washington" earlier in his career, he is often confused with the Canadian Jackie Washington, born in 1919, who is 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").

Jackie Washington, folksinger

Born Juan Candido Washington y Landron on June 2, 1938, 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 once in the wee hours Washington was set upon by the Boston Police resulting in a "cause célèbre" exposing racist police brutality. 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).

His version of the traditional English nonsense song "Nottamun Town" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottamun_town] was the tune and arrangement used by Bob Dylan as the basis for "Masters of War", [http://www.bobdylanroots.com/wash.html] . 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.

In 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.

Jack Landron, actor

He relocated to Manhattan to pursue acting under the name of Jack Landron. 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. He has done extensive work in commercials and continues to compose.

Landron is a member of the board of the New York Screen Actors' Guild.

He is currently learning his lines for Maxwell Anderson’s "Night Over Taos", to be directed by Estelle Parsons in the fall season of 2007 [http://www.playbill.com/news/article/110224.html] .

For further reading

"Baby, Let Me Follow You Down: The Illustrated Story of the Cambridge Folk Years" by Eric Von Schmidt and Jim Rooney, 1979 (out of print)

"Josh White: Society Blues" by Elijah Wald (2000)

External links

Illustrated Jackie Washington discography [http://www.wirz.de/music/washfrm.htm] begins with Jackie Washington Landron and then goes on to the Canadian Jackie Washington

An article about Jackie Washington's return to Club Passim (formerly Club 47) in 1997: [http://www.elijahwald.com/rockarch.html]

fuller acting credits than most sites: [http://www.hellohola.org/HP5/hp5-resume.php?recordID=0405005]

Broadway credits: [http://www.ibdb.com/person.asp?ID=104325]

TV work: [http://www.tv.com/jack-landron/person/27870/summary.html]

Cuban/Latino Theater Archive: [http://scholar.library.miami.edu/archivoteatral/review/viewActors.php?actor_ID=1927]

Answers.com gets his birthyear (1938) wrong: [http://www.Answers.com/topic/landron?cat=entertainment]

thumbnail bio, also wrong on birthyear: [http://www.mp3.com/artist/jack-landron/summary/]