Seattle, WA
Seattle’s coolest jazz club replaced decades ago by parking garage
In a tiny storefront membership on First Avenue on the foot of Cherry Avenue 60 years in the past, jazz historical past was made, and an area man was there to protect a whole lot of it for posterity.
The tiny jazz membership in downtown Seattle, on the sting of Pioneer Sq., existed for less than about six years. It was referred to as The Penthouse, however it wasn’t on the high of a constructing, it was at avenue stage in an previous three or four-story lodge. Regardless of its deceptive title, it hosted a number of the best-known jazz artists on the planet.
The Penthouse was owned and operated by a man named Charlie Puzzo, who would later be higher identified for working an adult-entertainment venue in Woodinville referred to as Good-Time Charley’s (and sure, “Charley” was spelled otherwise than Charlie spelled his first title.) The Penthouse opened proper round January 1962 when many new eating places and bars had been debuting prematurely of the Seattle World’s Truthful – which might open April 21 of that yr. Building for the truthful reshaped Decrease Queen Anne Hill that yr and reshaped the soul and character of the town endlessly.
Down on First Avenue, together with beer, wine, and jazz – and, in a little bit of foreshadowing of Puzzo’s future endeavors, servers dressed like Playboy Bunnies with out the ears and fluffy tails – The Penthouse was reshaping Seattle in its personal particular manner because the membership additionally grew to become dwelling to a weekly dwell distant radio broadcast on KING-FM referred to as “Showcase of the Energetic Arts.”
The producer and host of these dwell 30-minute broadcasts, sitting stage-side with historical headphones and a classic mixing board and witnessing all that music historical past, was a 24-year-old named Jim Wilke. He had lately settled in Seattle, the place his sister already lived, after rising up in Iowa and graduating from school there. Wilke had joined the workers of KING-FM in 1961.
KIRO Newsradio caught up with Jim Wilke earlier this week on the sidewalk at First and Cherry, on the west facet of First Avenue, proper in entrance of the place the legendary Penthouse as soon as stood.
“Seattle didn’t have a full-time, major-league jazz membership till The Penthouse,” Wilke stated. “And that put us on the map with San Francisco and LA. If a touring nationwide or worldwide group performed three locations on the West Coast, The Penthouse was one in every of them.”
“Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Cannonball Adderley – all these nice stars had been all taking part in there, Carmen McRae,” Wilke continued. “Aretha Franklin did a present there, however Aretha Franklin on the time was fairly unknown. She was simply one other woman singer with a jazz trio doing requirements.”
The membership itself was not precisely glamorous, however the acoustics had been truly fairly good.
“It was a typical Pioneer Sq. storefront, that’s, slim and deep,” Wilke stated. “As you walked in, there was a sandblasted brick wall in your left, and the stage was up in opposition to that about midway down. The bar was on the far finish, and the restrooms had been again behind that, after which the workplace was upstairs.”
“The stage was extra towards the entrance, however [the space] being lengthy and slim, the stage was on the facet,” Wilke stated. “So the viewers was seated on the wings of the stage,” apart from a couple of tables proper in entrance.
The stage itself, Wilke says, was actually only a riser. It couldn’t have been a lot increased as a result of the membership had a dropped ceiling with acoustic tiles in most areas and mirrors over the stage.
The ceiling was so low over the stage, “You can virtually change the sunshine bulbs within the reflector cans,” Wilke stated. However the stage was carpeted, and one way or the other, the general sound was fairly good.
“It was a really dry room,” Wilke stated. “It was not echoey in any respect. It was good that manner.”
And in that very dry room, Penthouse proprietor Charlie Puzzo was a personality with a thick East Coast accent, however he “was a mild soul . . . and he actually revered the musicians,” Wilke stated.
As an example, beneath Charlie Puzzo’s administration, The Penthouse was not a spot the place the viewers carried on a dialog throughout the performances.
“They had been instructed that they had been in a ‘listening membership,’” Wilke stated. “Charlie Puzzo would stand up in entrance and say, ‘Okay, youse guys, time to cool down; we’re going to have the music now.’ He’d say, ‘This can be a listening room, and we respect your silence, and the individuals sitting round you’ll as nicely.”
“So he let individuals know that the aim of that is to be right here to hear,” Wilke stated.
To seize the sounds of the musicians, Wilke would arrange 4 microphones for every broadcast, together with at the least two legendary RCA 77 “ribbon mics.” He’d join the microphones to what might need been the one possibility out there in 1962 to somebody producing a dwell distant broadcast from a tiny jazz membership: two items of RCA gear, an “OP-6” single channel audio amplifier, and an “OP-7” four-channel audio mixer. The blended and amplified sound was then despatched again to KING-FM utilizing a particular cellphone line which, in these days, solely the cellphone firm may set up and activate.
“After which I monitored on headphones,” Wilke stated. “I shudder to think about the headphones that I used to be monitoring on. I feel they had been brush headphones or one thing, wore such as you would see a World Struggle II bomber pilot,” he stated, laughing on the reminiscence.
Nevertheless it was by these bomber pilot headphones, from 1962 till someday in 1968, that Jim Wilke bore audio witness to historical past. He was on the Penthouse one evening per week producing dwell broadcasts and personally experiencing a whole lot of performances by superb jazz artists for many of the membership’s six-year run.
And that may be an excellent story by itself. Nevertheless it will get higher.
As a result of in the meantime, again on the previous KING-FM studios on Aurora Avenue simply north of the now long-gone Battery Avenue Tunnel, a reel-to-reel tape deck was rolling, making recordings of every present. The purpose, Jim Wilkes says, wasn’t to create an archive, and guidelines round dwell broadcasts of musicians meant that KING-FM may by no means rebroadcast the reveals as reruns. The recordings had been made solely in order that Wilke may later hearken to himself and listen to the place he wished to enhance his supply of the transient introductory remarks he made initially of every broadcast.
Luckily, most of this unintentional audio archive survived, and Jim ended up with the tapes. Then, when he was at a jazz convention a couple of years in the past, somebody remembered the previous Penthouse reveals, and an concept was hatched. Finally, offers got here collectively to start out releasing a number of the finest recordings on CD and vinyl.
Better of all, the commercially launched archival recordings should not bootlegs. The file corporations Wilke works with safe the rights to the music from the artists or their estates and in addition create dense liner notes and embrace, the place doable, pictures and different archival supplies. Among the releases initially produced by Wilke – that are all mono, by the best way, however sound fairly superb simply the identical – have gained main awards for finest archival jazz recording of the yr.
In sharing the story of his years of dwell broadcasts from The Penthouse, Wilke is simple and matter-of-fact. Which is ideal as a result of the story wants no embellishment or hyperbole to sound magical and virtually legendary all these many years later.
Wilke went on to have an extended profession that included a complete of 16 years at KING FM, plus roles launching what grew to become the longtime staple of public radio referred to as Jazz After Hours, producing jazz live shows round Seattle, and internet hosting a long-running program on KNKX referred to as Jazz Northwest.
It’s good to know that this legendary broadcaster and recording engineer, and a real visionary by way of jazz and classical music programming, made such an auspicious begin at a small and now largely forgotten jazz membership in Seattle.
A part of the rationale The Penthouse is forgotten is that the constructing which housed the membership was demolished many years in the past to make manner for a parking storage. When requested if he thinks a brass plaque or different monument ought to be devoted in reminiscence of the jazz hotspot, Jim Wilke laughs and says it will be extra acceptable if the constructing had been nonetheless standing. Plus, he’s extra centered on the long run than the previous.
In an e-mail a day after visiting the location of the previous membership, Wilke wrote, “One other Ahmad Jamal two-disc album is predicted by fall. There are at the least two extra by different artists within the means of being reviewed and cleared for launch (can’t say who, simply but.)”
His understated pleasure comes by, even through e-mail. “There are some we’d very a lot love to do however have been unable to get clearances,” Wilke wrote.
Nonetheless, although, together with an unintentional audio archive, a bronze plaque on the web site of The Penthouse can be a fairly cool factor.
You may hear Feliks each Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning Information with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien, learn extra from him right here, and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast right here. In case you have a narrative concept, please e-mail Feliks right here.