From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Wed Jan 23, 2002  7:36 pm
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Tuts Washington

TUTS WASHINGTON (By Dave Penny)

Born Isidore Washington, Jr., 24 January 1907, New Orleans, Louisiana
Died 16 August 1984, New Orleans, Louisiana

Vocalist/pianist. After trying out harmonica and drums, around the age
of 10 Tuts began fooling with his aunt's upright piano. In the 1920s and
'30s he played with New Orleans jazz bands as well as playing rent parties
and fish fries as a solo blues and boogie pianist and by the late 1940s he
had joined a trio playing with Smiley Lewis, accompanying Lewis on his
first recordings for DeLuxe and Imperial. Tuts recorded seldom, though he
continued playing with jazz bands in New Orleans and appeared in the
acclaimed 1979 documentary "Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together".
In March 1983, the year before he died, Tuts finally made his first solo
recordings for Rounder, which appeared on the LP "New Orleans Piano
Professor".

Further reading: Jeff Hannusch, I Hear You Knockin' (1983), p. 5-14.