Tyrone Washington

Natural Essence is the only album Tyrone Washington recorded as a leader for Blue Note. The tenor saxophonist was 23 when he cut it in December 1967, fresh from Horace Silver's band, and he wrote all six pieces himself. Released in 1968, it moves easily between searching post-bop, the groove of soul jazz and the raw heat of the avant-garde, and it remains the clearest statement by a player who recorded little and soon left the scene.

The session was held at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs on 29 December 1967. Washington had made his first Blue Note appearance in 1966 on Silver's The Jody Grind, in a horn section with trumpeter Woody Shaw and alto saxophonist James Spaulding, and he kept the same front line for his own date. Shaw, a friend since their childhood in Newark, was an obvious ally. The rhythm section is Kenny Barron on piano, Reggie Workman on bass and Joe Chambers on drums, and Spaulding also plays flute.

The title track opens the album with a sinuous theme for the three horns. Yearning For Love is a plaintive ballad, while Positive Path runs on hard-driving swing and gives Shaw and Washington room to stretch over Chambers. Soul Dance settles into an irrepressible groove, the closest the record comes to the soul-jazz side of Blue Note in those years. The last piece, Song Of Peace, drops piano, trumpet and alto and leaves Washington alone with Workman and Chambers.

Washington's fast runs have often been compared to John Coltrane's, but on the slower material he sounds more like himself. Around the same time he also played on Larry Young's Contrasts, recorded in September 1967. He made only a handful of records in the following years, among them Roots for Perception in 1973, before leaving jazz.

This stereo Tone Poet edition, issued in January 2026, was produced by Joe Harley and mastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio from the original analogue master tapes. It is pressed on 180g vinyl at RTI and housed in a deluxe gatefold tip-on jacket.