Black & Tan Club (Seattle)

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The Black & Tan Club was a Seattle music club that existed from 1932 to 1966 and was located on the ground floor of the Entertainer's Club (404 1/2 12th Avenue South).

The Entertainer's Club was located in the entertainment district of Seattle between 12th Avenue and Jackson Street, one of the known Speak Easy's in the city, in the Prohibition era belonged E. Russell "Noodles" Smith, the impresario of the African-American nightlife in Seattle. In the basement was the Black & Tan Club , which - founded in 1922 as the Alhambra Club by Burr "Blackie" Williams and Noodles Smith - from 1933 under the name Black and Tan was equally accessible to the white and African American population. As early as 1932, its predecessor was known as “Seattle's most esteemed and longest-lived nightclub” (de Barros).

Oscar Holden and Fats Waller performed here as early as the 1920s, and Duke Ellington , Count Basie and Louis Armstrong's bands in the swing era . Later on, bebop , blues and R&B musicians such as Charlie Parker , Eubie Blake , Aretha Franklin , Ernestine Anderson , George Benson , Gladys Knight , Ivie Anderson , Jimmy McGriff , Little Willie John , Phil Upchurch , Guitar Shorty , Etta James played here , Sarah Vaughan and Ray Charles . In the 1950s / 60s, the black and tan was the center of Seattle's soul scene. In 1962 the young Jimi Hendrix could be seen here as a member of the band Bobby Taylor & The Vancouvers.

further reading

  • Paul de Barros: Jackson Street After Hours: The Roots of Jazz in Seattle . Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1993

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kaegan Faltys-Burr: Jazz on Jackson Street: The Birth of a Multiracial musical community in Seattle
  2. ↑ Quintard Taylor: The forging of a black community: Seattle's Central District, from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, 1994 S. 147
  3. ^ Alton Hornsby: Black America: A State-by-State Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1 , p. 911
  4. ↑ The nightclub is said to have been a source of inspiration for Ellington's composition Black and Tan Fantasy . See Kaegan Faltys-Burr: Jazz on Jackson Street: The Birth of a Multiracial Musical Community in Seattle
  5. ↑ Kathy Knight-McConnell: Curtis Knight: Living in the Shadow of Jimi Hendrix , p. 104 and David Henderson: 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky: Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child . P. 64