Seattle Has Taste For Jazz

The local jazz scene, which has produced such popular performers as Quincy Jones and Kenny G, has gotten a boost lately from the city's art community, which is checking out Bud's Jazz Records during Thursday night Gallery Walks.

"We've more than tripled our revenues on those nights since we decided to stay open late until 9 p.m. for the Gallery Walks with the other merchants in Pioneer Square," says Bud's owner James Rasmussen of the weekly event, where artists make the rounds at city galleries. "There are a lot of painters and sculptors who look at each other's work in about 25 downtown galleries. We offer Martinelli's sparkling cider to them, along with cheese and crackers. We've watched more of the higher-end clientele return to us, maybe because they didn't know where we were located until Gallery Walk."

Bud's Jazz Records is an 18-year-old institution in Seattle, firmly ensconced since 1982 in a white-washed, 2,000-square-foot basement on Jackson Street. It was designed by Bud Young, who modeled it after his friend Bob Koester's Jazz Record Mart in Chicago. Since Rasmussen bought the store last March, Young is semi-retired. He now works part time at Bud's three days a week and hosts the "Don And Bud Show" on Seattle's KBCS on Mondays.

Bud's has 80,000 jazz titles, of which nearly 10% are by Pacific Northwest performers, such as acclaimed teenage pianist Aaron Parks, bebop tenor and sax player Don Lanphere, and the ensemble New Stories Trio.

Jazz is satisfying this latte-drinking city's thirst. "Our gross income is up by 40% in the last couple of months," says Rasmussen, who leads his own band, the Jazz Police. "I think it's because we're carrying more stock than ever before and since we have an expanding population in Seattle."

Young's first taste of jazz came "when I was 10 or 12 years old," says the former owner, who did real-estate research for Montgomery Ward department stores for 19 years. "I listened to Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong at my friend Marshall Brown's house. He's since become a high school jazz educator in Farmingdale, Long Island [N.Y.].

"I wanted to combine my interest in jazz with retailing," he adds. "I took an Alaskan ferryboat in 1982, and it brought me to Seattle. That's when I discovered Pioneer Square, and I came back to do my 'mini-research study' about jazz three weeks later. I've been very proud of my site selection here, because I've never moved to another building."

Bud's "customers were 99% male until around 1990," says Young. "Females were very rare, unless they came in to purchase an album for their husbands or boyfriends. Women are much more interested in jazz now."

Today, both sexes purchase from a selection of vintage CDs that "we should never be out of at any time," says Rasmussen. Those are from such masters as Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Ellington, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis.

"We really don't have a 'star policy' here, though," emphasizes Rasmussen. "For us to carry even 10 of a brand-new album would mean we have a lot of faith in it. We want to move more merchandise, but through variety.

"Diana Krall was one of our largest sellers last year, along with the Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba," he recalls. "Krall's gotten tons of airplay and publicity. She made a few appearances in Seattle, well before she ever signed with Universal."

Bud's product mix is 55% mainstream jazz, 10% big band, 10% female jazz artists, 10% Seattle-area jazz, 5% blues, 5% Dixieland to early jazz, and 5% jazz anthologies.

Latin jazz is one of the hottest categories. "We have much of the early Cuban jazz, like CDs by Beny More from 1928 to 1945," says Rasmussen. "But I've stayed away from the Buena Vista Social Club, because you can buy it anywhere. Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri's 'Masterpiece Obra Maestra' album has probably been one of our prime sellers."

Seattle is like a blank canvas for new jazz. "Aaron Parks received a medal from President Clinton," Rasmussen says. "He's talented way beyond his years and a child genius who attended the University of Washington in Seattle when he was just 16 years old." Aaron Parks Trio's latest CD is "The Promise" on Keynote Records.

"We went through 50 CDs of 'Like A Bird' by Don Lanphere on Origin Records," Rasmussen continues. "He has 11 CDs, besides those he recorded with Max Roach, Woody Herman, and Fats Navarro. His newest is 'Don Still Loves Midge' on Hop Records. The New Stories Trio is a favorite of Seattlites, with Marc Seales on piano, Doug Miller on bass, and John Bishop on drums and with Ernie Watts. They have 17 albums on indie labels, including 'Speakin' Out' on Origin Records."

"Usually I know who's playing in town and what nights at the clubs and concert halls," says Young, who recommends Dimetriou's Jazz Alley and other venues for live jazz. Yet, Seattle doesn't have a major jazz festival—unlike nearby Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia—despite at least five nonprofit jazz trade organizations: Earshot Jazz, Puget Sound Traditional Jazz Society, Tenacle, Jack Straw, and San Juan Island Jazz Festival Assn.

Lumberjacks and miners during the Yukon gold rush of the late 1800s in Seattle listened to jazz or its precursors on player pianos and crank music boxes in saloons in Pioneer Square. From the 1920s to the 1950s, Jackson Street had almost 30 nightclubs, as the post-World War II years brought 27,000 African-Americans to Washington for new jobs. Musicians' unions were segregated, so whites took to uptown ballrooms and blacks to after-hours downtown bars.

Seattle's new Experience Music Project museum cites Quincy Jones, Ernestine Anderson, and Ray Charles as regulars in the 1940s on Jackson Street. And it has Jones' Selmer trumpet from the Bumps Blackwell Band on display, along with 45s like "Confession Blues" by Charles with the Maxin Trio.

Seattle went bluesy by the mid-1950s, with R&B nights at the Birdland Club. Thomas & the Tomcats even featured then little-known Seattle guitar player Jimi Hendrix. "Unfortunately, I don't have anything on CD from that Seattle blues era," says Rasmussen. "There was all this partying going on then but not any recording. The nearest we have is a 'Seattle Beat' album on vinyl from after the 1962 World's Fair."

Hendrix listened to his father's 78s of Muddy Waters at home in Seattle's racially mixed Central District neighborhood, which had "Seattle's Secret Jazz Scene" in the 1950s. "We really don't have anything from Jimi Hendrix's early blues days here, either," says Rasmussen, although Hendrix went on the R&B circuit for four years with Little Richard and Curtis Knight before forming Jimmy James & the Blue Flames in 1966 in New York.

Today, Seattle has more formal jazz education for its youth, which Rasmussen wholeheartedly supports. When Wynton Marsalis and the Essential Ellington jazz fest invited 15 high schools to play May 15-16 at Lincoln Center in New York, four of them were from greater Seattle.

Rasmussen volunteers twice a week at the Jazz Lab at his alma mater, Franklin High School in Seattle, and he's traveled with his protégés to competitions. "In my senior year, I played in 1974 for Franklin High at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and we toured Europe," says Rasmussen, who also gives jazz CDs to 20 secondary schools during the year.