In 1986, Mr. Washington formed the Roadmasters and released his first nationally distributed album, “Wolf Tracks,” on the Rounder label. Jon Cleary, the Roadmasters’ first keyboardist, wrote on Facebook that with Mr. Washington’s band, “A new musical vocabulary opened up for me” that was “an unusual hybrid of soul, funk and jazz.”
Mr. Washington’s sets drew on his own songs and on a deep repertoire of current and vintage R&B and standards. One of his most popular songs was his funky remake of Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s “You Can Stay but the Noise Must Go.”
Through the next three decades of constant touring, Mr. Washington recorded with the Roadmasters for labels including Rounder, Bullseye Blues, Virgin/Point Blank, Zoho and Anti-. His 1999 album, “Blue Moon Risin’,” featured horn players who had worked with James Brown.
Mr. Washington married Michelle Bushey in 2021, onstage at the New Orleans club Tipitina’s. She survives him. His survivors also include his oldest daughter, Sada Washington, whom his 1991 album, “Sada,” was named after; another daughter, Mamadou Washington; and his son, Brian Anderson.
In 2018, a decade after his last studio album, Mr. Washington made a stripped-down, more intimate album, “My Future Is My Past,” produced by Ben Ellman of the New Orleans band Galactic, on which he set aside the horn section and sometimes switched from electric to acoustic guitar. One song, “Even Now,” was a duet with Irma Thomas, with whom Mr. Washington had worked four decades earlier. Mr. Washington had recently completed another studio album with Mr. Ellman as producer; it is awaiting a label deal for release.
