Bluesman Jackie Washington began singing as a child and knew hundreds of traditional songs. (CBC)

Jackie Washington, a Canadian blues musician who has been performing since the age of five, has died. He was 89.

Washington died Saturday at St. Joseph's Healthcare in Hamilton from complications of a heart attack.

Washington was Canada's first black disc jockey when he went on air at CHML Radio in Hamilton in 1948.

But he is best known as a blues and jazz musician with a distinctive raspy voice and a repertoire of more than 1,200 songs.

At festivals such as Mariposa and the Northern Lights Festival in Sudbury, where an award is named after him, he entertained with his singing, but also with a huge stock of light-hearted stories.

In a 1983 interview with CBC, Washington said the Canadian blues is slightly different from what you hear from the U.S.

"We have a different theory of the blues. Often it's to do with trouble with women. What I do when I play it, I say 'This is one of the songs I wrote when I was having trouble with one of my wives,'" he said, delivering the line with a laugh.

He played with jazz giants Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton and Clark Terry; songwriters Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot; and bluesmen Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and Lonnie Johnson. Washington is a member of the Canadian Jazz and Blues Hall of Fame.

His first album, in 1976, was Blues and Sentimental. He also recorded Jackie Washington and Friends in Concert on December 4 1994 and Where Old Friends Meet and We'll Meet Again with fellow musicians Mose Scarlett and Ken Whiteley.

Washington was born Nov. 12, 1919, in Hamilton, the third of 15 children. His great-grandfather had escaped slavery in the U.S. via the Underground Railroad.

Distinctive voice

A bout of diphtheria at the age of four left him with the hoarse voice that was a trademark throughout his career.

Washington began entertaining at age five in a quartet called the Washington Brothers that sang at social functions in Hamilton and throughout southern Ontario.

While continuing to perform, he worked shining shoes, in a factory, as a washroom attendant and as a railway porter, maintaining a lifelong love of trains.

Self-taught on piano and guitar, he appeared in Hamilton and Toronto nightclubs throughout the '40s and '50s.

According to the Canadian Jazz and Blues Hall of Fame, Washington's career enjoyed a resurgence in the 1960s with the revival of folk and blues music, and he began to tour the festival circuit.

His huge repertoire included traditional songs from the days of slavery and the early 1900s, many learned within his own family.

"We used to sing school songs and then my mother got us into hymns. By the way, spirituals and the blues go hand in hand," Washington told CBC in his 1983 interview.

"My dad was an old-time musician and was interested in square dances and reels."

Among the songs he was known for were A Little Street Where Old Friends Meet, Chicken, If I Had a Girl Like You and Your Feet's Too Big.

He last performed in public about three weeks ago, at a ceremony after donating his papers to McMaster University, according to the Hamilton Spectator.

Washington's life has been the subject of a documentary, and he appeared in the film version of Hank Williams: The Show He Never Gave.

Author James Strecker helped Washington write his autobiography, More Than A Blues Singer, which was published in 1996.

Washington received a lifetime achievement award from the Ontario Arts Council in 1995 and another at the Maple Blues Awards in 1998.

A park in Hamilton is named after him. He is survived by his wife, Eleanor, his son, grandson and a great-grandson.