Article by Todd Matthews

If you want to find the beginning of jazz in Seattle, you have to start at the King Street Station. The aged train station bordering the International District and Pioneer Square is just as important to the development of this area's jazz as the smoky backroom of a speakeasy or the stage of, say, Washington Hall on 14th and Fir. It was here, says writer and critic Paul de Barros, that musicians arrived to perform for a record number of loggers, fishermen, and sailors. And it was along nearby Jackson Street where Seattle jazz was born, starting in the early-1900s and lasting well into the 1960s.

Anyone familiar with jazz history surely knows of de Barros. The Seattle Times jazz critic, Earshot Jazz founder, DownBeat magazine contributor, and Jackson Street After Hours: The Roots of Jazz in Seattle author has captured the history and spirit of Seattle jazz for nearly two decades. When the Experience Music Project provided a walking tour of Jackson Street earlier this year (with de Barros as narrator and guide), nearly 100 people turned up for the opportunity to re-visit Seattle's raucous jazz roots. "Seattle may have been an outpost," de Barros told the crowd, his voice echoing through the train station, "but it certainly never lacked jazz." Some of the most notable jazz musicians either launched their careers in Seattle (Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, Ernestine Anderson) or played a number of gigs in the area ("Jelly Roll" Morton, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Billie Holiday).

Though the history is rich, physical remnants have been razed, re-named, or forgotten, as the Jackson Street tour quickly proved. "You will have to use your imagination during this tour," de Barros cautioned the group. Indeed, the site of the first documented jazz club (opened by Russell "Noodles" Smith in 1912) is now a parking lot overlooking the Pioneer Square neighborhood. A few blocks away, the site of The Ebony (where the innovative "Jam For Breakfast" series was launched, serving all-night revelers through the break of dawn) is now a Japanese restaurant. Across the street, the Green Dot (a barber-shop/horse-racing window/back-room jazz club) is now a bank. Around the corner, the Basin Street (perhaps the most notable club, owned and operated by Chinese lottery winner Davey Lee) is now an International District community center. And the Black and Tan ("Seattle's most esteemed and longest-lived nightclub," says de Barros) is now in the basement of a building that is rumored to soon be demolished.

Still, the tour was an excellent opportunity to walk through the pages of Jackson Street After Hours. With de Barros leading the way, the group made a stop outside the Bucket of Blood (the rowdy venue popular with musicians, but notorious for a murder that took place on the sidewalk out front), slipped in the back door of what was once the Black Elk's Club (Ray Charles first performed there), and stared up in awe at the red façade of Washington Hall (Billie Holiday performed there in 1953). Jackson Street readers have a hard time walking the area without imagining raucous music pouring out onto the sidewalks, well-dressed musicians walking up and down the street from club-to-club, and a line of classic limousines moving slowly down the street. Moreover, touring the area with its authoritative voice pointing out the notable clubs and landmarks served as a time warp of sorts for Seattle jazz enthusiasts.

The Jackson Street scene is long gone. Author de Barros cites several reasons for the scene's demise: hard-liquor was legalized in 1949; the desegregation of musician unions (club owners favored white musicians over black musicians); and the city's notorious "tolerance policy" (under which policemen were paid under the table for looking the other way when it came to gambling, prostitution and bootlegging) came to an end in 1969, when a number of city officials were indicted on charges of corruption. But the spirit of this scene is alive today, as evidenced by de Barros's book and historic walking tours.

INTERVIEW WITH PAUL DE BARROS | Click here

This article originally appeared in Earshot Jazz