The Black & Tan
1205 S. Jackson St.
or 404 12th Ave. S.
The Black and Tan is the most famous of all the Jackson Street venues and the one that lasted the longest. The club flourished off and on for 49 years, from 1920 to 1969, spanning the Jazz Age, swing era, the bebop revolution and Motown. For local musicians, it was a place to strut your stuff. Ray Charles played there often in the late ’40s, as did Seattle band leader Robert “Bumps” Blackwell (1918-1985), with Garfield High School students Quincy Jones (1933- ) and Ernestine Anderson (1928-2016) in Blackwell’s “junior band.” Later on, baby boomers would revel in the soulful music of local organ maestro Davis Lewis (“Little Green Thing”) and soon-to-be-famous electric guitarist Larry Coryell. At some point a young Jimi Hendrix probably dropped by the Black and Tan as well, to jam with friends, though no evidence exists that this happened.
The Black and Tan began life as the Alhambra Cabaret in 1920, when Harry Legg, a member of the King County Colored Republicans Club, decided to launch a social club in the basement of his successful Alhambra Grocery at the corner of 12th and Jackson. Legg advertised his grocery as “an enterprise to which all race loving and serious thinking colored Americans might look with pride.” He carried the same sentiment into his cabaret. From the beginning, the club served not only as a place of entertainment but as a community hub. One of the first events was a series of political debates by Republican candidates. In its first year the club also hosted one of the West Coast’s earliest jazz bands, Reb Spikes’ So Different Orchestra, which came up from Los Angeles and was followed by other prominent Black West Coast bands led by Curtis Mosby and Earl Whaley. The party continued with New Orleans clarinetist Joe Darensbourg, pianist Eubie Blake, and band leaders Fletcher Henderson, Jay McShann and Lucky Millinder. During WWII, when men were fighting overseas, all-girl bands such as the International Sweethearts of Rhythm and Eddie Durham’s All Girl Orchestra also played the Black and Tan. Touring musicians often dropped to jam after their theater gigs downtown, which explains why Duke Ellington was occasionally spotted there — once, according to Seattle band leader Gaylord Jones, with his entire band. Count Basie and Jimmie Lunceford apparently came by as well. In the ’60s, guitarist George Benson and vocalists Etta James and Jimmy Witherspoon played the Black and Tan too.
Teenage Ernestine Anderson singing at the Black and Tan, c. 1947. (Museum of History & Industry, Al Smith Collection, 2014.49.002-023-0074)
Ad, The Northwest Enterprise, 1949. The Maxim Trio featured Ray Charles, then known as R.C. Robinson, piano; Garcia McKee, guitar; and Milt Garred, bass.
Exterior of the Black and Tan, 1937, looking south down 12th Avenue South. The name “Black and Tan Cabaret” can be seen on the sign protruding from the corner of the building. Note also the Japanese-owned drugstore and dry goods store, lost by their owners after the 1942 internment.
(Source: Washington State Archives, Puget Sound Regional Branch)
![Black and Tan Hi Res 817010-0115,_drugstore,_1937[1].tif](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b4878d_41374f389e78440baf286a1338ae39dd~mv2.png/v1/crop/x_175,y_0,w_1149,h_861/fill/w_519,h_389,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/Black%20and%20Tan%20Hi%20Res%20817010-0115%2C_drugstore%2C_1937%5B1%5D_tif.png)
The International Sweethearts of Rhythm performing at the Black and Tan, September 1944. (Museum of History & Industry, Al Smith Collection, 2014.49.002-028-0103)
The Black and Tan was a medium-sized venue, accommodating perhaps 150, with a horseshoe-shaped bar, booths and playful musical notes decorating the walls above the stage. Over the years, it had several owners. Harry Legg died in 1923 and was succeeded by proprietor Felix Crane, who was implicated (but exonerated) in a famous bootlegging scandal involving police lieutenant Roy Olmstead. In 1931, Russell “Noodles” Smith, who operated several clubs and hotels in town, bought the venue, changed its name to the Black and Tan and moved the entrance to South Jackson Street. In late 1941, the venue reopened as the Colored Waiters, Porters and Cooks Club, operated by an association of that name. For a while, the names were used interchangeably, but by the 1950s most people knew the place as the Black and Tan.
The name is significant. The term “black and tan” denotes a venue where races mix in harmony, a major feature of the Jackson Street nightlife district. Ray Charles, who came to Seattle from the segregated south, noticed this immediately.
Ad, The Northwest Enterprise, September 14, 1950.
“When we were working the Washington Social Club [on East Madison Street] or the Black and Tan,” he recalled, “three or four o’clock in the morning, you have all kinds of people. And that was unusual for me to see such a thing like that … it was very different …you saw everybody — white, Black — it didn’t make any difference, people were just there! In Florida, if you worked in a white club, it was a white club, and that was that. It was new to me to go someplace and everybody was just loose and free.”
The blurring of racial lines was a significant and, ultimately, highly influential feature of Seattle’s popular music, manifested later by Ray Charles’ bold crossovers into country music, Quincy Jones’ mix of Black and white pop in his production of Michael Jackson, and the early hits of Little Richard, produced by Bumps Blackwell, which helped catapult Black R&B into teenage white culture.
Site of the Black and Tan, 2024.