Glen Washington
Artist. Reggae, roots
- Active
- 1970s-present
- Sunrise
- Clarendon, Jamaica
Glen Washington is a singer and drummer, a full-voiced tenor in the Beres Hammond mold (a comparison he took as a compliment, though "I know there's no one that sounds like Glen Washington"), whose late-blooming career brought out what the Rough Guide calls the best album of new material from Studio One in a couple of decades.
Born in Clarendon, he sang lead with a group called Names and Faces in the early 1970s and then with C35 Incorporated, where Joseph Hill, later of Culture, taught him the drums; when Hill left, Washington took over the drum seat. In 1978 his rootsy "Rockers No Crackers," on Joe Gibbs and Errol Thompson's Errol T label, was a sizeable hit wherever reggae was played, but for two decades afterwards he was heard of mainly as a drummer on album sleeves. He moved to the United States in the 1980s and at one point played drums for Stevie Wonder.
In the 1990s he relaunched his singing career in New York. A single on Brooklyn's Don One label in 1997 caught the ear of collectors, and Coxsone Dodd, by then working mainly from New York, recorded him over vintage Brentford Road rhythms, freshly mixed, with the new vocals voiced at the Music Lab on Fulton Street. Brother to Brother (1998) and Wandering Stranger (2000) were both warmly received. He was much in demand in between, from Digital English, whose "This Kind of Feeling" was very catchy, to Ruff Cutt and Stingray in London, and his "Give Jah Praises Everyday," with Dean Fraser on saxophone, made a strong impression on roots followers. Next to You (1998) for VP carried "Kindness for Weakness."
Last updated November 5, 2026
Connections
- Joseph Hill (bandmate)
- Coxsone Dodd (producer)
- Joe Gibbs (producer)
- Errol Thompson (producer)
- Dean Fraser (collaborator)
- Studio One (label)
Notes
- "Reasoning with Glen Washington," Jahworks, interview of October 11, 2004, https://jahworks.org/admin/reasoning-with-glen-washington/. The same piece says he moved to the United States with Happiness Unlimited to work with Stevie Wonder.
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 436-37.
- "Glen Washington," biography, Reggaeville, accessed October 21, 2026, https://reggaeville.com/artist-details/glen-washington/about. See also the Joseph Hill entry.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 436. "Glen Washington," biography, which spells the title "Rockers Not Crackers" and says he moved to the United States with the band Happiness Unlimited.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 431, 437.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 415, 419, 435, 437.
- "Glen Washington," biography.
