Washington Hall
153 14th Ave.
The last stop on our tour is by no means the least important. On the contrary, Washington Hall has the distinction of being the first Seattle venue to host a local group billed as a jazz ensemble. On June 10, 1918, Miss Lillian Smith’s Jazz Band performed a Grand Benefit Ball here to raise money for the NAACP. When you consider that the dance happened just 15 months after the 1917 release of what is considered to be the first jazz record (“Livery Stable Blues”), Miss Smith was righteously up to date.
Born in Fulton, Missouri, Miss Smith won a “syncopated piano” competition as a teenager at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 and moved to Seattle in 1909, where she formed the Syncopated Knights. Her band was in high demand for Black society functions throughout the 1910s and ’20s. One listener, Donald Gatewood, whose mother directed the choir at Mt. Zion Baptist Church, remembered the Syncopated Knights as a ballroom dance band that occasionally played “hot” jazz solos. Sadly, Smith’s career was cut short before the Jazz Age ended. She died in 1927, at the age of 40.
Smith arrived in Seattle just a year after the Danish Brotherhood erected Washington Hall. Its purpose was to provide housing and to serve as a community hall and concert venue. The hall is on the first floor; the theater is upstairs. With its deep stage, ballroom dance floor and wraparound balcony, it became a popular venue for diverse occasions and could accommodate a standing crowd of up to 735 people. Over the years, the stage has hosted Danish and Yiddish theater, Filipino Youth Club dances, boxing matches, hip-hop, avant-garde performance art (presented by former resident company On the Boards), and plenty of jazz, blues and rock ’n’ roll.
The first billing of a local jazz band. (Cayton’s Weekly, May 25, 1918)
Seattle band leader Edythe Turnham played a benefit for victims of the great Mississippi flood of 1927, commemorated in Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues.” (Seattle Enterprise, May 20, 1927)
Washington Hall in 1937, with the 14th Avenue entrance to the theater on the right. (Source: Washington State Archives, Puget Sound Regional Branch)
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Seattle jazz singer and pianist Joni Metcalf recalled sharing a double bill in 1951 at Washington Hall with the great singer Billie Holiday.
“Our band played for the dancing, then Billie came out and did her show with her own pianist,” recalled Metcalf. “I was so excited, just to be that close to her. She sang beautifully!”
Over the years, most of the area’s major Black jazz band leaders played at Washington Hall, including Gene Coy, Earl Whaley, Edythe Turnham, Al Pierre, Billy Tolles and Al Hickey. In 1960, a young Jimi Hendrix appeared there with the Rocking Kings.
Historic Seattle purchased Washington Hall in 2009 and renovated the building. It is now home to three arts organizations: 206Zulu, which celebrates hip-hop culture; Voices Rising, which mentors queer performers of color; and Hidmo/Cypher Café, a network of artists, educators and activists.
Jimi Hendrix (second from left) with the Rocking Kings, 1960, at Washington Hall. (Courtesy of Al Hendrix)
Washington Hall, 2024.