A pro. Charles Mudede

On a cold and rainy late-fall night, I walked down an alley toward the door for one of Seattle’s most prestigious cultural institutions, Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley. The year was 2010. My wife and I had dressed up for a show that featured the greatest singer of that time, Cassandra Wilson. I discovered her voice back in 1993 while listening to a jazz program on KCMU (Now KEXP). The radio played her version of Robert Johnson’s “Come on in my Kitchen.” The old blues song is already haunting, and Wilson re-haunted it with a soul that tapped the deepest parts of the black American experience. That night