Joseph Washington, Jr.

Joseph Washington, who worked by day as a plasterer, was a San Jose–based musician who performed around the Bay Area in the mid-1970s, releasing two self-produced singles and occasionally appearing on Jay Payton’s long-running show “Soul Is” on San Francisco’s KEMO station. Washington made two LPs in the 1980s, both released independently, without support from a label: his unlikely Christmas album debut in 1981 was followed by a second record, Make Way for Love, in 1988. He passed away in late 2021, after years of declining health.