Born 12 December 1943, Buffalo, New York, USA, d. 17 December 1999, New York City, New York, USA. Growing up in a musical family, Washington was playing tenor saxophone before he was a teenager. He studied formally at the Wurlitzer School of Music in Buffalo and paid his dues gigging locally on tenor and other instruments in the early 60s. After military service in the late 60s he returned to his career, recording a succession of albums under the aegis of producer Creed Taylor, which effectively crossed over into the new market for jazz fusion. By the mid-70s, Washington's popular success had begun to direct the course of his music making and he moved further away from jazz. Commercially, this brought continuing successes. "The Two Of Us', with vocals by Bill Withers, reached number 2 in the US pop charts in 1981, and The Best Is Yet To Come with Patti LaBelle. Over the years Washington enjoyed several gold albums, and 1980"s Winelight sold over a million copies, achieving platinum status and gaining two Grammy Awards.

Washington's playing displayed great technical mastery, and early in his career his often blues-derived saxophone styling sometimes gave his playing greater depths than the quality of the material warranted. The fact that much of his recorded output proved to be popular in the setting of discos tended to smooth out his playing as the years passed, depleting the characteristics that had attracted so much attention at the start of his career. By the late 80s Washington was still enjoying a degree of popular success, although not at the same high level as a few years before. He worked with Ramsey Lewis and Omar Hakim in the Urban Knights during the 90s. He died in 1999, collapsing in his dressing room after taping a performance in New York for CBS' Saturday Early Show. He had been suffering from prostate cancer. The posthumous Aria featured adaptations of Puccini, Bizet, and Delibes.