Toni Lynn Washington
Toni Lynn Washington’s 60-plus-year musical career has taken her across the planet, from multiple tours of North America and Europe to performing for US troops in Vietnam. But despite such globetrotting and extended periods living outside New England, she’s widely associated with Boston because she moved to the city in the ‘50s and has been a prominent figure on its blues scene since the ‘80s, earning the nickname “Boston’s Queen of Soul and Blues.” Much like the late jazz vocalists Rebecca Parris and Carol Sloane, Washington is able to turn practically anything she sings into something sublime, reminding listeners that New England’s richness of musical talent stretches beyond internationally acclaimed symphony orchestras and chart-topping rock groups.
MUSICAL BEGINNINGS
Born Dorothy Helen Leak on December 6, 1937, Washington lived in Southern Pines, North Carolina until her early teens, when she moved with her family to Boston. She’s cited one of her earliest memories as singing gospel songs while doing chores with her grandmother and she sang in school and church choirs in Southern Pines and Boston, including at St. John Missionary Baptist Church in the latter’s Roxbury neighborhood. “I didn’t have much of a background as far a performing or anything like that,” she told WBGH’s Arun Rath on All Things Considered in 2023, noting that she doesn’t come from a particularly musical family but wanted to perform on stage for as long as she can remember.
“I liked listening to the radio, and I think music just became a part of me,” she told Rath. “That’s really something that I really wanted to be – an entertainer. So, gradually, it happened. We hadn’t heard of ‘TV’ back in the day, but on the radio I’d listen to Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald – it just goes on and on. I liked what I heard and I wanted to be a part of that.” Washington used to sing along with the radio often as a child, learning most of the hits of the day along with songs by blues artists such as Joe Turner and Big Mama Thornton, and she considers that to be a kind of training ground for her later career. “I just learned them,” she said when she asked how she remembered so many tunes at such a tender age. “There’s nothing unique about it. I listened to the radio all the time and you just learn the songs.”
MOVE TO BOSTON, “DEAR DIARY,” 1960S/’70S CAREER
By the time her family moved to Boston in 1950, 13-year-old Washington had gained so much confidence in her singing skills and familiarity with the pop songs of the era that she surprised everyone in the audience by approaching a band on stage mid-set to ask if she could sing a number. “It was a huge band. It was always an orchestra back then,” she told Rath. “They were playing, and I went up to the stage and asked them if I could come up and sing a song. Ruth Brown was very popular back in those days, in the ‘50s, and I got up and sang either [Brown’s hits] “(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean” or “5-10-15 Hours.” I learned all of her songs and I surprised the crowd and my mom.” As a high school student in Boston in the mid-‘50s, she occasionally snuck into clubs to make similar impromptu appearances.
Soon after graduation, Washington married a Navy officer and the pair spent the next several years moving from base to base, including ones in Pensacola, Florida and Norfolk, Virginia. Quite unlike traditional military wives of the era, she frequented local clubs and sat in with as many acts as she could, building her reputation as an exceptional singer and eventually attracting the attention of New Orleans-based Kon-Ti Records. Washington recorded her first-ever single for the label, “Dear Diary” (co-written by Washington and Kon-Ti owner Lionel Worthy) b/w “Breaking Lovers Hearts” (co-written by Worthy and Lenny Lewis), and “Dear Diary” cracked the top 50 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966.
Following the success of the single, Washington toured with Sam & Dave, Jackie Wilson and other R&B greats, which led to more opportunities including one with Los Angeles-based group Sound 70. In the early ‘70s, she was invited to perform for US troops in Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia as part of the “Bob Hope Presents” showcase, and after the end of the war in ‘75 she joined a quartet of former Raelettes (Ray Charles’s backup singers), performing on the West Coast and in Las Vegas.
RETURN TO BOSTON, ALBUMS, NOTABLE APPEARANCES, AWARDS, MEDIA
In the early ‘80s, after spending over two decades living “way down South” or “way out West,” as New Englanders might say, Washington returned to Boston, playing a regular spot at The Bay Tower Room on State Street. After being the lead singer in Boston Baked Blues during the late ‘80s, she co-formed her own band in ‘92 with keyboardist Bruce Bears (of Boston Baked Blues) and in 1995, at age 58, she cut her debut album, Blues at Midnight, released by Tone-Cool Records. Four more LPs followed over the next 20 years: It’s My Turn Now (1997, Tone-Cool), Good Things (2000, Tone-Cool); Been So Long (2003, NorthernBlues) and I Wanna Dance (2015, Regina Royale). In addition to Bears, her band members have included guitarists Duke Robillard, Kevin Belz and Mike Null; saxophonists Chuck Langford, Gordon Beadle and Doug James; trumpeter Scott Aruda; bassists Jesse Williams, Sven Larson and Steve Cuoco; and drummers Dave Jamrog and Mark Texeira.
Washington has been a regular presence at festivals around the US, Canada and Europe over the past 30-odd years – sharing stages with acts including Buddy Guy, James Cotton, James Montgomery, Robert Cray, Roomful of Blues, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Bruce Marshall and Canned Heat – and has appeared at notable New England venues including Scullers Jazz Club and The Bull Run. She’s been nominated seven times for WC Handy National Blues Awards, is the recipient of Boston Blues Festival Lifetime Achievement Award and a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition and has been featured in regional and national publications including Boston, The Boston Herald, The Boston Phoenix, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Ottawa Citizen, Essence, Living Blues, Blues Revue, Big City Blues, Jazziz and DownBeat. In 2023, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu proclaimed December 6th “Toni Lynn Washington Day.”
FAITH
In December 2024, the month that Washington celebrated her 87th birthday, Regina Royale issued her sixth and latest album, Faith, a nine-track collection of songs produced by Boston-based harmonicist Brian Templeton. Financing the disc was a major challenge (even after a GoFundMe campaign) and all 29 of the musicians and singers on the LP agreed to play for free. Regina Royale founder Diane Blue said that finding people who wanted to appear on the album was easy since Washington is so widely respected and loved. “She’s an awesomely talented woman and she can command an audience like no one I know,” she told WBUR’s Noah Shaffer at the time of the album’s release. “I constantly learn from watching her and listening to her.”
The LP includes standards such as “Just a Closer Walk With Thee,” “Down by the Riverside” and “I’m Going Up to Heaven to See the King” in addition to lesser-known tracks from artists like The Salem Travelers and Shirley Ann Lee, Bob Dylan’s “Are You Ready?” (from his 1980 album Saved) and ZZ Top’s “Jesus Just Left Chicago” (from their 1973 album Tres Hombres). “I thought, ‘How cool it would be to have Toni Lynn, Boston’s Queen of the Blues, covering ZZ Top?’” Templeton told Shaffer about the tune that some considered an odd inclusion. “It’s straight blues, so I was able to stay in her neighborhood and let her do what she does best.” As for what the response to her very first gospel album will be, Washington said she wasn’t sure. “I don’t know where it’s going to lead, but I’m hoping that it’ll get out there and be played,” she told WGBH’s Rath. “Perhaps I can form some church gigs. I just don’t know.”
MENTORING ADVICE, CAREER REFLECTIONS
Asked about the kind of advice she gives to younger artists, Washington noted the importance of following one’s gut, not just one’s technical training. “I have to let them know that this is something that they have to feel,” she told WBUR’s Shaffer. “It’s not something that you just learn. You have to make sure you do yourself and don’t try to copy anybody else.”
Asked for some reflections on her success as a singer, Washington downplayed her own spectacular vocal skills while highlighting the talents of the musicians who’ve surrounded her over the decades, particularly those from Boston and the surrounding area. “I know what I want when I’m on stage,” she told WGBH’s Rath, “but I don’t play music, I don’t write music and I don’t read music. The only thing I know how to do is sing. I tell the band what I want, and they take the ball and run with it. I’m so glad to be working with so many wonderful, talented professionals in the business, since I really don’t have to worry about my performances on stage.
“There’s a lot of fantastic music here in Boston,” she added. “To be connected with the music scene here in this city is about the best thing that could have happened to me. I mean, true, I’ve done a lot of world tours and we’ve had a lot of fun there. But settling down here in Boston is where I really need to be right now.”
(by D.S. Monahan)
