(upbeat jazz music) - After World War I and the Influenza Pandemic, the jazz age of the 1920s flourished, thanks in part to new prohibition laws.

In Seattle, the nightclub and speakeasy scene took off spreading from Pioneer Square, to Chinatown, to the central district.

From it, a music scene sprouted.

From jazz, blues, to rock and roll, it nurtured generations of great music and musicians and left an extraordinary legacy.

It was the amazing Jackson Street club scene.

(upbeat jazz music) (inquisitive instrumental music) Seattle was a very segregated city back then.

(somber jazz music) By day, the social norms of the white majority and their redlines were steadfast.

Racist covenants spread through neighborhoods.

The local KKK rallied, but there was semi-clandestine relief from those pressures as races mixed exuberantly in after-hours clubs that featured Black musicians, clubs like the legendary Alhambra, later more famous as the Black & Tan at 12th and Jackson.

(rhythmic jazz music) This crossroads jazz historian, Paul de Barros, has written, was the epicenter of the scene that stretched from the late teens to the 1960s.

(upbeat jazz music) In clubs, dance halls, cabarets, gambling dens, and speakeasies, he has written, "Seattle rocked with wine, women, whoopee, and jazz."

Historian Quintard Taylor has written that venues like the Congo Club, the Rocking Chair, the 300 Club, quote, "Flouted law and custom by allowing gambling, after hours, drinking, and interracial mingling."

They were the only places where well-to-do white businessmen and socialites met Black and Asian laborers and maids as social equals (rhythmic jazz music) All night clubs, dance floors, and the illicit establishments were the connective tissue of an expansive vice district with Jackson as its main artery.

As Seattle urbanized, and the population grew, including a Black population leaving the Jim Crow South, the demand for entertainment boomed partly due to Washington's early prohibition law in 1916 and later with an influx of workers during World War II.

It's hard to pin down when jazz first came to Seattle.

(bluesy jazz music) If it followed the Mississippi River up to Chicago from New Orleans, it arrived in Seattle in the teens perhaps via Vaudeville visiting acts.

The first documented concert by a local jazz band was performed by Miss Lillian Smith's Jazz Band at an NAACP fundraiser at Washington Hall in 1918.

Big name Black band leaders came through town and found a home and fans along Jackson Street.

Visiting band leaders often came to clubs after performances in downtown theaters, including big names like Lionel Hampton, Cab Calloway, and Duke Ellington.

A mainstay of the local scene was a lesser known musician named Frank Waldron, whose work in Seattle had a long-lasting impact.

(upbeat jazz music) Waldron played trumpet and saxophone in a number of bands, including the WhangDoodle Orchestra, which played popular music at many venues in the region.

(upbeat jazz music) From the upper floor of a Jackson Street rooming house, he gave music lessons.

His students included Quincy Jones and Buddy Catlett, who played bass for Louis Armstrong and Count Basie.

Jones remembered his first lesson with Waldron in an interview with Paul de Barros, Jones said he, Jones, exhibited the worst technique in the world, and Waldron said, "Well, I'll be damned."

As if saying, what am I gonna do with this dude?

Greg Ruby, a musician who has written about Waldron and studied his work, believes his contributions are significant to the musical history of Seattle.

They're not limited to his students or his playing during the jazz scene heyday, he was also a composer.

(light-hearted jazz music) He wrote and published a song called Kaiser's Got the Blues (Since Uncle Sam Stepped In) a World War I era piece.

In the mid 1920s, he also published a book of his compositions called Syncopated Classics, which was meant to showcase and teach jazz technique.

Ruby points out that despite Seattle's lively Jackson Street scene, almost none of the music was recorded.

Thus, Waldron's compositions have literally not been heard for decades.

(playful jazz music) But Ruby's band has recorded Syncopated Classics, and Waldron's work is a rare example that fills an audio void from Jazz's early days here.

(upbeat jazz music) The living tradition of music, passed from one person to the next, has influenced jazz and popular music.

In later years, the club scene helped shape the talents of folks more famous than Frank Waldron.

Ray Charles, Ernestine Anderson, Jimi Hendrix.

The roots of Seattle's Jazz Age are deep.

and through the generations continue to nourish the world.

(upbeat jazz music) - Hear more about this episode on the Mossback podcast.

Just search, "Mossback," wherever you listen.

- Mossback's Northwest is made possible by the generous support of Port of Seattle.