Kurt E. Armbruster - Before Seattle Rocked: A City and Its Music

BEFORE SEATTLE ROCKED

A City and Its Music

KURT E. ARMBRUSTER

Before Seattle Rocked: A City and Its Music is published with the assistance of a grant from the Naomi B. Pascal Editors Endowment, supported through the generosity of Janet and John Creighton, Patti Knowles, Mary McLellan Williams, and other donors.

Copyright 2011 by the University of Washington Press
Design by Thomas Eykemans
Printed in the United States of America
16 15 14 13 12 11 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS
P.O. Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145, U.S.A.
www.washington.edu/uwpress

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Armbruster, Kurt E.
Before Seattle rocked : a city and its music / Kurt E. Armbruster.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-295-99113-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-295-80100-1 (ebook)
1. MusicWashington (State)SeattleHistory and criticism.
2. MusicSocial aspectsWashington (State)Seattle.
3. MusiciansWashington (State)SeattleBiography.
4. Popular musicWashington (State)SeattleHistory and criticism.
5. Popular musicSocial aspectsWashington (State)Seattle.
I. Title.
ML200.8.S43A43 2011
780.9797'772dc22 2011005005

The paper used in this publication is acid-free and 90 percent recycled from at least 50 percent post-consumer waste. It meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481984.

FRONTISPIECE PHOTO: The Jackie Souders Orchestra at the Olympic Hotel in 1955.
Courtesy of Dick Rose
PAGE 7: Drawing by the author

To Ed Tuba Man McMichael (19552008),
a working musician

For Cedar

He that dances should always pay the fiddler.

Abraham Lincoln

I WANT TO THANK Taylor Bowie Jr., Pete Leinonen, and the anonymous reviewers whose corrections and suggestions made this a better book; my editors at University of Washington Press, Lorri Hagman and Kerrie Maynes, for their encouragement and patient guidance; Warren Johnson, Monica Schley, Motter Snell, and the executive board of the Musicians Association of Seattle, Local 76493, American Federation of Musicians, for their solid support; and Al Smith Jr. and Alexandra Smith for granting access to Al Smith Sr.s wonderful 1940s images. Most of all, my warmest appreciation goes to all who lent their perspectives and memories to this project: Chai Ahrenius, Douglas Q. Barnett, Overton Berry, Norm Bobrow, Stan Boreson, Hugh Bruen, Harley Brumbaugh, Tamara Burdette, Pamela Casella, Michael Crusoe, Marty Dahlgren, Stuart Dempster, Don Firth, Burke Garrett, Dick Giger, Howard Gilbert, Don Glenn, Scott Goff, Ed Gross, Bonnie Guitar, Gary Hammon, Bob Hill, Mike Hobi, Dave Holden, Grace Holden, Jack Hungerford, Warren Johnson, Stan Keen, Sally King, Milt Kleeb, Jim Knapp, Ed Lee, Pete Leinonen, Rev. Samuel McKinney, Joni Metcalf, Lucy Mitchell, Johnny Moton, Craig Nim, Ronald Phillips, Edward Andy Piatt, Ronnie Pierce, Nick Potebnya, James Rasmussen, Jack Roberts, Dick Rose, Richard Sanderson, Monica Schley, Gerard Schwarz, Peter and Ellen Seibert, Ron Simon, Don Smith, William O. Smith, Floyd Standifer Jr., Alice Stuart, Jay Thomas, Walt Wagner, Jim Wilke, Phil and Vivian Williams, and Rev. Patrinell Staten Wright. You made our world a joyful place!

BEFORE SEATTLE ROCKED

Everything was confusion. A vast space... a cats cradle of arching girders... perfume and cigarette smoke... the hum of three thousand voices. Then everything went black. A blue-white spear lanced the darkness and lit up fifteen men in white coats, and out of chaos came a sound of indescribable sweetness. The audience fell silent and settled happily into their seats. Colored lights blazed, skaters twirled, but my eyes kept drifting back to the men in the white coats. I pointed to them. The musicians, my mother said. I was hooked: The skating was goodbut the music was better!

F OR GENERATIONS the men in white coatsand the women in black dresseswere the very definition of musician. Music for these practitioners was not necessarily fun or artistically fulfilling. It was work. In theater pits and dance halls, taverns and opera houses, ballrooms and skating rinks, making music was a job . For much of the twentieth century, most of Seattles working musicians belonged to the unionspecifically, the Musicians Association of Seattle, Local 76 of the American Federation of Musicians. The union dictated wage scales, work rules, and how many performers must be hired at the various classes of venues. Failure to obey the rules meant fines or expulsion. Venues deemed unfair by the union were boycotted, and support from sympathetic union brotherhoodsbartenders, stagehands, teamstersmade those boycotts effective.

Working Seattle musicians acquired professional standing through simple cultural evolution. By the late nineteenth century, as society grew steadily more affluent and more artistically sensitive, music became a valuable commodity, and its practitioners came to recognize that they formed a distinct professional entity as worthy of substantive remuneration as their brothers in mine and factory. During the heyday of professional music in Seattle, it was by no means unusual for a well-placed union musician to make a living plying his or her craft. Of his six-night-a-week job at the Seattle Town and Country Club, trumpeter Don Smith exclaimed, That job paid an actual, honest-to-goodness living wage. I bought a house, made

Seattle is a music town, and for many, that means rock and roll. The Northwest sound of the regions early rock bands is universally acknowledged, and the fact that their city succored in her bosom Ray Charles, Jimi Hendrix, and Kurt Cobain fills Seattleites with proprietary pride. Fifty years of rock, however, were preceded by more than a hundred years of music that was equally exciting to its listeners and important to the communitys evolution. More centuries of continuous native music preceded that.

Seattles early industrial development made a vibrant musical life inevitable. Logging and coal mining created a strong demand for a large male labor force, and that labor force demanded food, shelter, and entertainmentlots of it. The latter was by no means subsidiary, and a hallmark of old Seattle was a lusty culture of saloons and sporting houses. To the young man lonely and hungry for both stimulation and a morale boost, music was at least as essential as beer and sex, and echoes of the cornet and the piano sustained the citys workforce through its long, bone-wearying days in mill and shipyard. As people worked harder and more newcomers showed up, Seattle demanded bigger, fancier gathering placesand music to fill them. In the wake of railroad and gold-rush booms came hotels, restaurants, theaters, and legions of musicians.