Bellingham in the 1920s calls to mind a few exciting chapters of local history, including the “Wild West” era of saloons ending with Prohibition, the rail and streetcar boom, and the Tulip Festival. And since the “Jazz Age,” Bellingham also has held an understated but influential foothold in jazz.
Jazz music, considered one of the only uniquely American art forms, originated in the African-American community in the 1910s and 20s. It soon evolved into subgenres such as big band and swing, bebop, Dixieland, and crossovers with blues, ragtime, and world music. Jazz has traditionally moved from big cities to small, including from Seattle to Bellingham.
“The Less Subdued Excitement: A Century of Jazz in Bellingham and Whatcom County, Washington,” by Milton Krieger, catalogs local history. The 2012 book cites public records and musician interviews to breathe the spirit of our jazz scene and its evolution.
Early Jazz History
Krieger describes how a 1921 photo from Diehl Ford’s opening years shows possibly Bellingham’s first jazz performance with “A four-piece band, with men on violin, string bass and clarinet and a woman on piano.”
The first chapter singles out four Bellingham jazz pioneers: pianist and organist Einar Moen, saxophonist Mel Mckee, and violinists and reed instrumentalists Art Hoeruegel and Joe Szymanski. These men led bands on KVOS radio and venues such as Mount Baker Theater, The Leopold Hotel, Henry Hotel (later the YMCA), and Elks Club through the 1920s and decades onward.
“Against the grain of one stereotype about jazz […] all four of these pioneers lived to or past the age of eighty-three,” Krieger writes. Many mentored the following generations.
Krieger also interviewed Ken Husfloen, Bob Nunamaker, Walt Germain, and Gordon Downs, some of Bellingham’s oldest surviving jazz musicians at the time of writing. They played with early pioneers while sharing the youth’s enthusiasm for jazz pre-World War II.
The post-war period brought prosperity, leisure time, transportation, and new media to connect Bellingham’s jazz pioneers with other cities. Musicians played “perhaps two dozen Whatcom and Skagit grange halls,” including female orchestras and artists such as Irene Waters, Harriet Hatch, Anne Gillett, Mamie Rowlands and her daughter Barbara, and sisters Harriet and Echo Oxford. Many played the emerging modernist jazz and bebop.
As the chapter on Musicians Union Local 451 describes, jazz musicians unionized between 1936 and 1970. This enabled them to play venues and secure fair pay after a 1934 city ordinance against live music following the repeal of Prohibition.
Bellingham on the National Stage
The chapter “Our Mainstream Jazz” describes how, by 1970, jazz gained a modernist, formalized sensibility after the influence of artists such as Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman. Local combos included The Blue Notes, The Lemon Drops, and The Skippers.
Bellingham also saw performances by legendary jazz artists. Les Brown’s and Tommy Dorsey’s big bands visited, while Jimmie Lunceford and Duke Ellington played venues such as Forest Grove Ballroom and Bellingham Armory. “Wynton Marsalis has three times followed Mount Baker Theatre concerts by joining jam sessions in nearby clubs,” as Krieger notes, and more recently returned in 2023.
Krieger also notes, “‘A list’ artists have booked Bellingham between Seattle and Vancouver dates since the 1920s.” Additionally, Western Washington University and high school students at the Blaine Jazz Festival have enjoyed clinics with jazz masters.
The chapter on Western describes how the school’s jazz education started with Don Walter’s 70-member concert band in 1950 after its music department began in 1945. Today’s Performing Arts Center building opened the following year. The program grew into the 1960s when Walter Zuber Armstrong, “John Coltrane’s and Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s student” and Western’s second African-American faculty member, introduced the first jazz course.
Western’s concert band expanded after the influential 1960s-70s leadership of directors Phil Ager and Bill Cole. Today, Western offers Jazz Studies ensembles and teaches some of the best high school players in Running Start.
Local youth education was extracurricular at Bellingham High School by the 1950s, when The Swing Kings became the first jazz band to influence later programs. Sehome High School included jazz shortly after it started in 1966, with the Swing Choir and Jazz Choir becoming classes by the late 1970s. Beginning in 1998, Squalicum High School developed jazz programs into the 2000s.
Bellingham Jazz Today
The book’s remaining chapters describe venues and current local jazz. As Krieger describes, big names in local jazz clearly trace their influence to local and regional educators before them. Current organizations include the Bellingham Community Band, Swing Connection, Bellingham Traditional Jazz Society, and Jazz Center of Bellingham.
Youth education has continued with Blaine Youth Jazz Camp, which started in 2002, along with its high school program and Canadian traffic, and Whatcom Community College through Running Start. Music educators such as Kevin Woods, Frank Kuhl, Mark Schlichting, and Matt Kenagy have supported numerous schools and organizations. Jud Sherwood’s The Jazz Project started in 1997 and funds Mark Kelly’s Bellingham Youth Jazz Band for local middle schools.
Clayton Medeiros’ poem “Bellingham Jazz,” concluding the book, summarizes the scene: “A sensibility beyond categories written across the faces and bodies/Of players in time’s meditation, euphoric, exuberant, anguished, Ahead of the beat, behind the beat, in the pocket, Right here in Bellingham.”
