This post is part of the series 13 Ways of Looking at the Northwest. You can find the initial post here.
By Heather Lowcock, Project Archivist, NHPRC Grant – News Tribune Collection
I have a collection of concert ticket stubs and memories. There’s one for a standing room only Mumford and Sons concert with my mom, a desert festival ticket that included dust, sunburn, Flogging Molly, and Wiz Khalifa, and a club stub for some Buddy Guy Chicago Blues. Then there’s the Modest Mouse ticket when another teacher and I ran into our students, the Glen Hansard ticket when an acoustic set validated a life change, and the first date ticket, which didn’t result in a second for the guy but did bring a long-term love for the band.
Music for me and many others provides us with another way of looking. It is often shapes culture and creates community as evidenced by these Metallica fans at a “Monsters of Rock” Kingdome concert in 1988, who clearly got very close. While Grunge is the genre perhaps most often linked to the Northwest, The News Tribune shared stories for a few other musical options.
Rock ‘n Roll
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair in New York in 1969 is well-known, thanks, in part, to its mud and musical performances by Jimi Hendrix (a Seattle native) and Janis Joplin. However, what about the Sky River Rock Festival or the Buffalo Party Convention and Pig Roast?
The second annual Sky River Rock Festival in Tenino was a 3-day event with 35 bands including Joe Country and the Fish and the Steve Miller Band. It was described in The News Tribune as a “hippie state fair,” and the festival was not without controversy. According to The Spokane Natural, an independent periodical, the Tenino City Council changed its mind about the festival when the regional coordinator of the John Birch Society “stood up and spewed forth horror-fantasies about immoral revolutionaries holding a dope orgy” and five council members then sought an injunction. However, the injunction was overturned by the State Supreme Court, and the event was held in September 1969 across the 320 acres of Rainier Hereford Ranch. It brought in an estimated 50,000 people, and included three weddings, a parking lot childbirth, and “several reports of drug usage, nudity, and juveniles drinking.”
The promoters of the Buffalo Party Convention and Pig Roast at Flying M Ranch outside Eatonville the following year faced further challenges. Despite attempts to cloak the rock festival intention with their “convention” title, the event was banned two days before it was to be held in July 1970 by a local judge who called it a “thinly disguised rock festival” that violated county ordinances. The festival still went on as planned with about 15,000 people in attendance. Twelve people were then charged with contempt by prosecutor Ron Hendry for violating the court order. In response, one defendant Rich Dokken surrendered to the sheriff in costume with his ball-and-chain.
Jazz
For many years, jazz in the South Sound was celebrated by Red Kelly. In 1949, Kelly started touring with his upright bass in Chubby Jackson’s big band. He continued to tour and do studio work with the likes of Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, and Charlie Barnet. He and his wife Donna opened the Tumwater Conservatory in 1974 where most nights Kelly would play alongside Don Ober and Jack Perciful. Northwest local and world-renowned jazz singer Ernestine Anderson often came to sing, and Saxophonist Chuck Stentz and his wife Jan, a jazz singer, were also regulars. Kelly closed the Conservatory in 1978 and continued to play local gigs and tour with Jimmy Dorsey’s “ghost band.” In 1986, he opened Kelly’s and the jazz crowd made their way to Tacoma. Visits from Tony Bennett, Diane Schuur, and local musicians like Barney McClure kept the jazz age going in Tacoma until 2003 when Kelly closed the club.
One frequent visitor to both the Tumwater Conservatory and Kelly’s was saxophonist Bill Ramsay. The Centralia-born Ramsay played tenor sax in Red Kelly’s quintet and was co-leader of a band with Milt Kleeb who frequently performed at Kelly’s. In an interview with Randy Smith, whose book Talking Jazz profiles many Northwest musicians, Ramsay recalls how well-known Kelly and his club were to other musicians, “I’d be in New York and meet somebody, a musician: ‘You’re from Tacoma? How close are you to Red Kelly?’” Ramsay had his own notoriety. Friend and jazz pianist Barney McClure called him “a genius.” When he started out, Ramsay played gigs around Tacoma while working at Nalley’s. He went on to work with Billy Eckstine and Duke Ellington, and he toured with Benny Goodman and the Count Basie Orchestra. He was a founding member of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra and a mentor at Jazz Port Townsend.
You can listen to more of Randy Smith’s interviews with some of the musicians mentioned here.
Also check out the Meltarrus ‘Mel’ Washington photograph collection. Washington was a central figure in the integration of Army bands at Fort Lewis in 1948 and often played his tenor sax at Hilltop’s Esquire Club and Marlene’s Galaxy in Puyallup.
Want more Northwest Music? How about when Aretha Franklin shut down McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary with a concert that one inmate said was, “the greatest thing in the history of McNeil Island.” Maybe you prefer classical piano or a little punk? Do you miss Bing, long for the days of hair metal, or maybe you’re a little bit country? Come explore your way of looking…or listening!
The digitization and processing of the News Tribune Photograph Collection was supported by a grant from the National Historic Publications and Records Commission at the National Archives.
Sources:
Anderson, Win. (1969, September 2). Weary pop fans end potluck–trek home. The News Tribune.
Nesvig, Jonathan. (1968, November 5). Lady soul wins 1,100 hearts. The News Tribune.
News Tribune staff. (1970, August 14). Eatonville festival defendant surrenders. The News Tribune.
Smith, R. L. (2022). Talking jazz. Randy L. Smith.
Spokane Natural. (1969, August). Independent Newsletters and Periodicals (5.4.1). Tacoma Public Library, Northwest Room, Tacoma, Washington.
Sweeney, Michael. (1969, August 31). 35 Bands set gay mood for rock festival fans. The News Tribune.
White, Dennis R. (2018, March 29). Red Kelly. Jive Time Records. https://jivetimerecords.com/northwest/red-kelly/
