WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO

ALL THAT JAZZ ?

Long known as the county seat of Left Coast Jazz,

Seattle's romance with the big time is only a memory.

By Perucci Ferraiuolo

Special To Metropolitan Living

 

According to Lillian, jazz as she knew it, disappeared from the Seattle scene long ago. Back then it was all about the music - the gig - and the freedom it squeezed from the very spirit of those who made it happen.

Her husband, Pops, for example, was known as a hard swinging jazz to blues tenor saxman who frequently jammed at the monarchy of Seattle jazz in the 1940s - the Washington Social Club - and also played with the Ernie Lewis Band. "He knew music," says Lillian, "if gave him life."

Just like Pops, modern-day icons like Quincy Jones, Ray Charles, and Ernestine Anderson grazed on Seattle's rich jazz talent that extended from the mid 1900's to it's heyday between the late 30's and early 60's. And, as if the area wasn't musically important enough, Vaudeville immigrants flooded the area, giving future music its place in Northwest history - talent like Ross and Nora Hendrix, the grandparents of Rock legend, Jimi Hendrix, who settled in Seattle after a short Vaudevillian gig.

But why Seattle? What was it about this Northwest burg that plucked and attracted would be jazz greats from all over the Country? Long-time Seattle jazzman, Floyd Standifer (dubbed the quintessential Seattle be bop musician), says it was because Seattle was "free."

"It was the perfect atmosphere for jazz to thrive," Standifer explains. "In the 1920's, Seattle was teaming with bootleg booze, prostitution, gambling, and after hours clubs. It was wide open. There was an aire of tolerance just under the surface of the law and that was just what was needed to nurture jazz. See, Jazz thrives on independence - the freer the better.

"In those days," Standifer recalls, "everyone made the after hours circuit and sometimes played all night long just to get the music out from inside them. But when people try to control jazz and what form it takes, real jazz immediately goes underground. And an underground atmosphere is right where it belongs. You never know what's going to happen with it or where the next big move will be."

And that's precisely why Seattle attracted jazzmen like so many moths to the flame. Among them, New Orleans' "Jelly Roll" Morton, who reputedly claimed to have invented jazz.

Complete with diamond-studded front tooth, Morton came to Seattle because he was a musician and a player. He worked as a gambler, pool shark, pimp, vaudeville comedian and, most importantly, a piano player. Though most compare his style with that of Scott Joplin, he was a prime influence in Seattle and a main transitional figure between ragtime and jazz piano style.

After touring the West Coast (and the Northwest) in 1922, Morton moved to Chicago where he hit the big time, forming his "Red Hot Peppers" band, and recording some of the world's finest jazz classics, including his tribute tunes to the Northwest, "Seattle Hunch I and II," for Victor records. No one ever shook a club like Morton. Seattle would never be the same.

And neither would Standifer. "Jazz gets in you and there ain't a thing you can do to get it out - except play," he says. In the early days we were all in Seattle - Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, Ernestine Anderson - it was a jazz town coming of age.

"We all used to hang out at Bumps Blackwell's meat market on 23rd and Madison - doing nothing but talking about jazz," Standifer reminisces. "I remember laughing out loud about Ray one day. He had this little Fender Rhodes (electric piano) and he played it so hard one night, he played it into a big pile of junk."

Ray Charles migrated to Seattle from Florida shortly after his mother died, in 1948. He was poor. He was virtually starving. And he was devastated about his mother's death.

However, Seattle was his turning point. Charles became a minor celebrity in and around local clubs and, with Gossady McGee, formed the McSonTrio - the first black group to have a sponsored television show in the Pacific Northwest.

But why Seattle? Charles seems to point to the Northwest as his musical outlet. "I was born with music inside me," he says in his autobiography. "(In those days) music was one of my parts...like my blood. It was a force already with me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me, like food or water. Music is nothing separate from me. It is me. You'd have to remove it surgically."

Standifer also recalls when Charles hit the vein that would catapult him to super stardom. "When Ray went into a blues thing, Buddy Catlett (fellow jazz legend bassman for Count Basie and Louis Armstrong) and I were stunned. 'Hey man,' I said, 'What's the matter with Ray. He's singing the blues like Nat Cole.' But you can't argue with what came out of his soul. It was pure poetry."

According to Standifer, that's the way it was in the 1940s. "We learned from each other," he explains. "Ray, Quincy (Jones), myself - everyone - we learned from the older musicians, the ones on the scene right then, and the ones who migrated in from New Orleans. The thing was, though, we all kept our individual style. Jazz was, and still is, musical democracy at its finest." In other words, jazz was an equal opportunity addiction shared by many threads in the Northwest jazz quilt.

For example, during the swing era, well known local, Junior Raglin, eventually joined Duke Ellington's orchestra; Corky Corcoran, who used to play at the 411 club in the International District, became one of the era's most famous musicians while playing with Harry James; Julian Henson, who once played for tips on Seattle's Jackson Street, went on to become Billie Holiday's accompanist; local pianist and vibraphonist, Elmer Gill, played with Lionel Hampton; Vocalist, Ernestine Anderson, who appeared on the cover of Time Magazine; pianist Gerald Wiggins, who accompanied Lena Horne and Dinah Washington; Frank Waldron, who gave Quincy Jones music lessons; and many more.

Did Seattle have jazz or did jazz have Seattle? "Jazz had a fast and firm hold on Seattle in those days," says Kirkland-based jazz saxophonist, Don Lanphere - once dubbed "The most notorious man in jazz." "All the big name bands loved Seattle. Count Basie, Ellington, Woody Herman.

Now 71, Lanphere recalls the "itch." "I came to Seattle from Wenatchee as a teenager to play at the Olympic Hotel. My dad gave me orders. 'After you play, go straight back to your hotel room.' But I never did. Why? Jazz was happening. I would finish my gig at the Olympic and go down to Chinatown and play all night long at the after hours clubs. It was the greatest of times.

"Jazz had Seattle, to be sure. And I think it will again," Lanphere continues. "You can fell it, smell it, and almost touch it We're on the verge of something very big happening all over again."

That sentiment, though, hasn't been lost inside Seattle's jazz - often called the world's best kept music secret. Many jazz luminaries found Seattle's "vibes" intoxicating.

"I was hooked on it in the early days, and the more I play now, the more it gets and stays inside me," smiles drummer Clarence Acox, a Seattle jazz celebrity since the 1940s who also has been a music teacher at Garfield High School (dubbed "jazz high" by those in the know) for over 25 years.

"Jazz just has more substance than any other art form and it lets you be you. It requires a refined taste, but once you've got it, you gotta hold on. See, jazaa is a big word - a huge word. Playing for the moment is what counts, and so does everything that comes into your mind while you play it. The Northwest has been eating up jazz long before I came on the scene in the 1940s."

In one of the last interviews before his stroke and subsequent death earlier this year, the grand master of skat, Mel Torme, said that Seattle had something long ago and it is bubbling to life now. "The jazz fans in Seattle grabbed me a long time ago," he says. "This is a time in Seattle, and in the whole country, when there is a renewed interest in jazz and a new appreciation of what I do. But the people in Seattle are hip and cool, and they're telling me that I'M hip and cool. That grabs me, man. It really grabs me. You know, there's a hot heritage in this town. And somewhere up there, just hovering above the city, jazz is waiting and people like me are answering."

Torme is unique, though. He has been accepted not only by jazz enthusiasts in the Northwest, but also with the younger generation - gen X if you will. He's broken through the frayed, plaid ceiling. For example in 1996, he played Bumbershoot, sharing the stage with rockers like The Ramones and MudHoney - and took eight curtain calls. It was the icing on his Northwest cake.

"I'm so grateful for that," Torme says of being accepted by younger fans. "It affords me the opportunity to get up every morning and do what I do - something some of the local jazz players understand. I absolutely love it."

Standifer agrees. "The way things are going," he says, "we may see a jazz revival here. But there will never be a time like we had in those days. Jazz wasn't a job, a gig. It was our life. A friend of mine named Dick Thorlakson died some time ago. He was in a band playing his heart out on the tune, 'Saint James Infirmary.' After his solo, he sat down and just passed away. What a way for a jazz musician to go."

©Copyright 2004 PF

Metropolitan Living