50 Most Influential Musicians

Vic Meyers

Bandleader Victor Aloysius Meyers ruled Seattle’s ballroom dancing scene in the speakeasy years. Born in Little Falls, Minnesota, in 1897, he grew up in Oregon and organized a band that toured until settling in Seattle in the 1920s. Meyers and his band performed as a regular part of the Jazz Age entertainment at the tony Butler Hotel with its fabled Rose Room (when it wasn’t being raided by liquor agents). He later held court at the faux-Mediterranean Trianon in Belltown (at the time, the largest dance hall in the Northwest). In those pioneering days of both radio and recording, Meyers proved himself an early adopter. His gig at the Butler led to what was the first commercial record made in the city (recorded “in the field,” as Seattle wouldn’t get an actual recording studio for years to come). Meyers was known for his bold defiance of Prohibition and also established his own venue (Club Victor) in the Denny Regrade. He later reinvented himself as a progressive politician, initially as a joke, until the pro–New Deal Meyers went on to get elected to Lieutenant Governor in 1932 and won reelection five more times. He also served as Secretary of State of Washington from 1956 to 1964 and lived until the age of 93. —TM

Because of him… Seattle entered the world of musical mass media with the first commercial record made here.
Now hear this: “Mean, Mean Mama” from the CD reissue The Bands of Vic Meyers will send you right back to the Roaring Twenties.

Randall Jay McCarty

Randy McCarty emerged out of the same 1960s musical counterculture that produced string bands like the Gypsy Gyppos and folk-rock groups like the Daily Flash. But instead of the Gyppos’ old-timey fiddles or the Flash’s electric guitars, McCarty and his friends riffed on medieval and Renaissance music with harpsichords, lutes, and the curved reed instruments known as krummhorns. In contrast to the formal presentation and romantic performances espoused by renowned Seattle cellist Eva Heinitz and her contemporaries, McCarty took a garage band approach to early music—he wanted it authentic, but it had to be fun. Early music, he decided, shouldn’t be preserved under glass but rather made for large amounts of people to enjoy. Without formal musical training beyond Roosevelt High School, McCarty became apprentice to Peter Hallock at St. Mark’s Cathedral and played in a long list of pickup groups and formal ensembles as well. Through the ’70s and ’80s he was the man to call when you needed a harpsichordist in Seattle. He was also morning DJ (specializing in early music) on KRAB radio, taught harpsichord at Pacific Lutheran, and restored antique pipe organs. —JR

Because of him… Seattle’s Early Music Guild was founded (with Jerry Kohl and John Gibbs) to widen exposure to the genre through concerts, scholarships, classes, and workshops.
Now hear this: McCarty’s approach to authentic performance of early music was shared by other period bands formed in the 1970s, including Ton Koopman’s Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, which can be heard on Yo-Yo Ma’s Simply Baroque.

Alice and Morrie Morrison

It was while working as an organist in a silent movie theater in Anacortes that Alice Nadine Lanterman first met her future husband, Bellingham dance instructor and dance-band drummer, Howell “Morrie” Morrison. By 1914 they were married and operating the Morrison School of Dancing. But in 1919 they formed the Morrison Music Company to publish a tune that Alice had penned titled, “My Love Is All for You.” Soon after a giant Chicago-based sheet music company licensed the song and pushed it nationally, it sold a reported 500,000 copies. That and her million-selling follow-up hit, “Love’s Ship,” brought in a fortune in royalties, and over the following decades the couple founded a string of dance halls, the Morrison Music record label, and even a pioneering Seattle-based recording studio replete with its own record-pressing plant. —PB

Because of them… The Pacific Northwest hit the national pop music scene and paved the way for regional publishing firms, recording studios, and record labels.
Now hear this: While these songs are not exactly easy to access, with concerted effort— and/or a little luck on eBay—you can find a Morrison Records 78rpm disc of “Love’s Ship” recorded by Seattle’s Jackie Souders and His Orchestra.

Jelly Roll Morton

Much of Ferdinand “Jelly Roll Morton” La Menthe’s biography remains shrouded in mystery. A native of New Orleans, the early jazz great was as gifted at making myths as at making music—he even went so far as to claim he was the sole inventor of jazz. However outrageous his boast, Morton was clearly one of the genre’s founding fathers, an extraordinary pianist, arranger, and small-band leader who blended an amazing variety of styles gathered on his travels. The most mysterious part of his career involves the years he spent along the West Coast between 1917 and 1923. When the love of his life, Anita Gonzales, threatened to leave him, he pursued her up to the Seattle-Tacoma area where he played in the segregated but thriving Jackson Street scene for a spell in 1919 or 1920. The speakeasy nightlife was conducive to gambling, and Morton later claimed he ventured up to Alaska wearing “diamonds pinned to my underwear” to safeguard all the money he’d made on a lucky night. Yet he also had unlucky periods that left him penniless—jazz scholars speculate that his popular piano instrumental “Seattle Hunch” referred to his sixth sense about just where his luck would turn. Morton’s trajectory eventually took him back East, but he died in Los Angeles in 1941. —TM

Because of him… Seattle got a taste of Morton’s mastery—years before improvised jazz caught on around the country.
Now hear this: His recording “Seattle Hunch,” a piece as flashy and sparkling as Morton’s diamond-studded front tooth, appears on the collection Jelly Roll Morton: 1926–1930.

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Published: December 2008