Topic: Music & Musicians
Today's labor union for Seattle's professional musicians is the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) Local 76-493, and that cumbersome name reflects perfectly the organization's tangled and sometime...
Washington's first World's Fair -- the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition -- was held in Seattle on the grounds of the University of Washington campus between June 1 and October 16, 1909, and drew more t...
In this People's History, HistoryLink staff historian Cassandra Tate (b. 1945) recalls a memorable encounter with Elvis Presley at Sicks' Seattle Stadium in Rainier Valley, on Labor Day weekend, 1957.
Despite having made billions of dollars as a result of his computer programming skills, Paul Gardner Allen insisted that he was not a geek. "I wasn’t a nerd," Allen writes in his 2012 auto...
Allied Arts of Seattle is one of the city's most influential advocates for urban design and the arts. It grew out of the Beer & Culture Society, a small circle of academics, architects, and artist...
Ernestine Anderson launched her amazing career as a jazz singer while still a teenaged Seattle high school student back in the 1940s. By the 1950s she was an experienced performer who'd toured widely ...
The excellent wood-working skills of Swedish immigrant, Otto Edward Anderson provided him with good job opportunities upon his arrival in the Pacific Northwest in 1888. One highlight of his career mus...
The Aqua Theatre was an open air stadium on the south shore of Seattle's Green Lake. The nationally famous Aqua Follies opened the new theater on August 11, 1950. Sell-out crowds came to see the wate...
Nettie Craig Asberry was an extraordinary, early African American resident of Tacoma who was known for her work in fighting racism and in helping to open doors for women. A founding member of the Taco...
Powell S. Barnett, a Seattle musician, baseball player, and community leader, was the organizer and first president of the Leschi Community Council. He was a leader in organizing the East Madison YMCA...
A half-decade prior to the Pacific Northwest's great rock 'n' roll eruption of 1959-1960 -- a period that saw a series of teenage groups (including the Fleetwoods, Frantics, Shades, Gallahads, Wailers...
Seattle's Kearney Barton was the man whose audio engineering work can be credited with forging the powerful aural esthetic that became widely known as the "original Northwest Sound." Numerous musician...
Several of Seattle's distinct neighborhoods are closely associated with their rich musical histories, including the Jackson Street area's early jazz scene, E Madison Street's funky R&B past, and d...
Don Julian Bernier, known as Wenatchee’s godfather of rock and roll, helped introduced Central Washington to America’s newest pop-music genre in the late 1950s. Born in Winthrop in 1937, B...
In 1875, Camelia Urso gives Seattle a concert using a Stradivarius violin.
On November 24, 1879, the Squire's Opera House, Seattle's first theater, opens. The evening’s event, sponsored by women from Congregational Church, features popular music, pantomime...
On November 7, 1890, Seattle musicians form a union called Musicians Mutual Protective Association.
On April 25, 1895, an article appears in the Everett Herald featuring rare details about one of the Pacific Northwest’s first guitar-makers, Mr. W. O. Welch. The story apparently was origin...
On December 13, 1902, the Beck Theater in Bellingham, located at 1310 Dock Street (now Cornwall), opens for business with the comic opera Foxy Quiller. The theater, built by Jacob Beck (1856-1915), se...
On December 29, 1903, Harry F. West conducts the first performance of the 24-member Seattle Symphony Orchestra. The concert is held in the ballroom of the Arcade Building, located on in downtown Seat...
On December 12, 1907, the Walla Walla Symphony Club Orchestra performs for the first time. The concert is held at the Keylor Grand Theater in Walla Walla. Edgar Fischer (1873-1922), one of the orche...
On December 28, 1907, an overflow crowd of nearly 3,000 jams into Seattle's new Moore Theatre at 2nd Avenue and Virginia Street for opening night. The fashionable group includes such honored guests as...
In 1909, the Nippon Kan (Japanese Hall) Theater opens on S Washington Street in Seattle's International District. The Nippon Kan serves as the cultural center of Seattle's Japanese community. It is bu...
In 1909, a committee formed out of Spokane locals of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) create the first edition of the IWW songbook. Many Spokane Wobblies (as IWW members are known) are migra...
On May 15, 1911, the Orpheum Theatre at 3rd Avenue and Madison Street opens to the public with an evening gala that's the toast of Seattle society. With business and political leaders past and present...
During 1912, the musicians in Enumclaw organize a union.
On November 14, 1914, Nellie C. Cornish (1876-1956), just returned from a nearly year-long stay in California, signs a lease for a one-room studio in the Booth Building at Broadway Avenue and Pine Str...
On January 7, 1918, the new Pantages Theatre, located at 901 Broadway in downtown Tacoma, opens its doors for the first time. Replacing the old Pantages on Pacific Avenue, the new theater has a seatin...