Tyrone Washington

Tyrone Washington is a deeply underrated **tenor saxophonist** who made a huge impact in a surprisingly small discography. Born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, he came up alongside his close friend, trumpeter Woody Shaw, and briefly studied at Howard University’s School of Music before jumping straight into the deep end of the jazz world. He joined Horace Silver’s hard bop sextet in the mid‑1960s and can be heard bringing serious fire and imagination to Silver’s album *The Jody Grind*. Around the same time he also recorded with organist Larry Young, further cementing his reputation as a powerful and forward‑thinking voice on tenor.

As a leader, Washington recorded only three albums, but they’re cult favorites for a reason. His debut, *Natural Essence* (1967, Blue Note), is a hard-hitting session featuring future heavyweights like Kenny Barron, Reggie Workman, Joe Chambers, James Spaulding, and Woody Shaw, blending post-bop intensity with spiritual overtones. He followed it with *Roots* (1973) and *Do Right* (1974), records that lean into **soul jazz, spiritual jazz, free jazz, and early ’70s funk**, with key collaborators like pianist Hubert Eaves, guitarist Billy Nichols, saxophonist René McLean, and drummer Idris Muhammad. After 1974, Washington stepped away from recording for religious reasons, later taking the name **Mohammad Bilal Abdullah** and becoming a Sunni Muslim minister. He effectively disappeared from the jazz scene, but among fans and collectors, his small body of work is still talked about as some of the most intense, searching, and soulful tenor playing of the late ’60s and early ’70s.