Topic: Music & Musicians
Walter R. Haines was, by all accounts, quite a character. He arrived in Seattle as a teenager in 1923 and quickly scored his first musical gig playing tuba and string-bass with the house orchestr...
As the Electric Guitar Era dawned in the 1930s, the strange keening sounds produced by those revolutionary new musical instruments profoundly impressed many early ear-witnesses. In at least a few inst...
The distinctive music of the Hawaiian Islands is easily recognizable -- its signature thrumming of a 'ukulele, thwacking of bamboo percussion sticks (puili), and keening "steel guitar" lines are, toda...
James A. "Al" Hendrix was the father of rock legend Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970). He grew up in Vancouver B.C. and moved to Seattle in 1940. He married Jimi's mother, Lucille Jeter (ca. 1925-1958) in 1942...
Jimi Hendrix -- the single most famous musician to ever emerge from the Pacific Northwest's music scene -- rose from extremely humble beginnings to establish himself as perhaps the most gifted and inv...
A self-described "dancehall singer," Ron Holden (1940-1997) was born into a prominent African American Seattle family that has long excelled in music and sports. A Garfield High School (Class of &acir...
Solomon Ho'opi'i Ka'ai'ai, known as "King of the Hawaiian Steel Guitar," was an extremely gifted player, a great innovator, and an originator of the Sacred Steel movement. He sailed from Hawaii to Cal...
A century-long tradition of songs that feature lyrics (and sometimes musical sound effects) associated with driving automobiles attests to the fact that songsmiths have found the topic of fast cars to...
The "Northwest Sound" usually describes that regional strain of R&B-tinged rock 'n' roll that was forged decades ago (ca. 1957-1964) in various Puget Sound-area towns and then taken to wider prominenc...
Intiman Theatre is a professional not-for-profit resident theater company in Seattle. From its inception in 1972 in a tiny 70-seat theater in Kirkland to its present operation in the 480-seat Playhous...
History will always remember Jerden Records as the Seattle company that foisted the Kingsmen and their infamous "Louie Louie" on the world back in 1963. But there is much more to the saga behind the f...
In January 1943, the U.S. Naval Military Band transferred from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois to Sand Point Naval Air Station in Seattle. A group of these musicians formed their own...