Black Elks Club
662 ½ S. Jackson Street
In 1948, Ray Charles (1930-2004) played his first regular Seattle gig here at the Black Elks Club, which occupied a suite of rooms upstairs, including a large performance space. The beautiful terra-cotta building was owned by the Rainier Heat & Power Company, one of two such buildings on South Jackson Street. The Black Elks was not affiliated with the more widely known Elks Club, which did not admit Black people. Seattle Lodge 109 of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World — IBPOEW, for short — started presenting holiday dances in Seattle as early as 1919. In 1943, not long after making this location its home office, the organization opened one of the city’s most popular late-night music venues. At the upstairs landing, patrons were greeted by a large stuffed elk; inside, smoke hung over the 100 or so seats. Barbecue sandwiches and drinks were on offer. If you knew whom to ask, recalled trumpeter Leon Vaughn, you could even get a taste of opium tea.​
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Entrance to the Black Elks
Club in its heyday.
(Museum of History & Industry,
Al Smith Collection, 2014.49.15.108.06)
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Charles, who came to Seattle from Tampa, Florida, was hired by Gus West, cousin of pianist Melody Jones, one of the first musicians to hear Charles in Seattle. (Read more about Ray Charles at Stop 20.) Pianist Cecil Young (1920-c.1975), a hot modernist from the East Coast reputed to have jammed with Charlie Parker in New York, also played the Black Elks with a quartet that had an enormous stylistic influence on Seattle jazz musicians. (They’re hip bebop vocal, “Who Parked the Car?” was a national hit.) Locally raised tenor saxophonist Billy Tolles (1924-2005) also made the Elks his headquarters for many months, as did a racially mixed band that featured tenor saxophonist Vernon “Pops” Buford, who came to Seattle from Oakland, California. Pianist Jim Gilles, who played with Buford, recalled that while the Black Elks was frequented primarily by Black people, white hipsters like himself felt welcome. “In those days,” said Gilles in 1989, “it was actually easier to mix, racially, than it is now. … It was very harmonious.”
The Black Elks was also known for star sightings. Nat Cole almost always dropped by after his regular downtown gig. One night Tolles brought his boss Dinah Washington to the club.
The Black Elks was a going concern through the late ’40s and early ’50s, but in 1953 police raids eventually forced it to close.
Site of the Black Elks Club, 2024. The entry at the far right has been divided into two doors. The Congo Room was two doors down to the left.
Next Stop: 12. The Golden West Hotel
Walk east to the corner of Seventh Avenue South and look up at the brick building next door to the construction site on the southeast corner. In very faint lettering, you can just make out the words of the ghost sign, “GOLDEN WEST HOTEL.” That’s your next destination. Cross South Jackson Street and walk to 410 Seventh Avenue South, on the east side of the street.
