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With the annual Earshot Jazz Festival now underway, the ribbon is about to be cut on a new path in downtown Seattle highlighting the history and culture of the golden age of jazz in Seattle along and near Jackson Street.

is a longtime local journalist and author, and one of the founders of the . De Barros, who wrote the seminal book about Seattle鈥檚 jazz history, the long out-of-print “,” joined 成人X站 Newsradio live Friday morning from the “trailhead” at King Street Station.

“The trail is a self-guided walking tour, starting at King Street Station and going up to on 14th (Avenue),” de Barros told 成人X站 Newsradio, exploring the pre-Interstate 5 (I-5) heyday of the neighborhoods, streets and former venues along Jackson Street. “And it takes about an hour to walk through, depending on how long you want to stop at each place. It basically tells you what happened here between 1912 and the early 1960s in this incredibly rich jazz scene that we had back in the day.”

 

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Seattle is better known by many for more recent music history, including Jimi Hendrix in the late 1960s, the burgeoning punk and new wave scene in the 1970s and 1980s that fomented the “grunge” explosion in the 1990s, and the head-spinning variety of current artists that seem to emerge with great regularity in the 21st century.

But the city鈥檚 earlier musical heritage, says Paul de Barros, runs through a deep well of jazz artists that many would recognize, as well as others not as well-known.

“I think everybody’s heard of Quincy Jones, everybody’s heard of Ray Charles,” de Barros said. “They both got their start here. Quincy was at Garfield High School, Ray Charles recorded his first records here, the great Ernestine Anderson was here. But even before that, Dick Wilson, the great tenor saxophone player who eventually went to Kansas City, was here. And a lot of great artists came out of our scene that many people, maybe if you just moved here, don’t know about.”

The Jackson Street Jazz Trail will be formally dedicated with a at King Street Station on Saturday, Oct. 19, at 3:00 p.m., featuring music, the premiere of a history video and a special guided edition of the tour. However, the goal of making the online information available via the 聽is to make the tour and the content compiled by Paul de Barros and others free and accessible at all times. Future plans call for a series of historic markers at key spots along the trail.

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Unlike the sanitized history promoted in some tourist spots or at places like Disneyland, the Jackson Street Jazz Trail doesn鈥檛 shy away from the more challenging aspects of this city鈥檚 history. Because of racism and segregation, Seattle wasn鈥檛 necessarily the most welcoming and friendly place for people of color during many decades of the 20th century.

Despite the more troubling aspects of history, or maybe because of them, Paul de Barros said that it was jazz 鈥� and the clubs and venues where it could be enjoyed in Seattle a century ago 鈥� that fostered connections for people and created what can only be described as “community.”

“The African Americans who came through King Street Station knew that there was a social club around the corner on Fifth (Avenue) called The Dumas Club,” de Barros said. “In 1912, the (black) porters and waiters knew that there was a club up on 12th and Jackson, that would later be called The Black and Tan, that was called The Cooks, Porters and Waiters Club 鈥� they knew that there was a community for black people.”

“At the same time, there were Asian people who owned the clubs and presented Black jazz musicians, and then there were the white college kids like , the piano player who’d later work with Billy Holiday, who came down to learn their craft,” de Barros continued.

“You had this great mix of white people, Asian people and black people, creating this wonderful cultural mix,” de Barros explained. “And yet, the ground for it was ‘redlining.'”聽 鈥� the now illegal practice of racial discrimination via strict provisions in real estate transactions 鈥� meaning “people of color lived in this neighborhood because they couldn’t live anywhere else, and the musicians unions were segregated, so black musicians played down here.”

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Thanks to Paul de Barros and the other founders of the Jackson Street Jazz Trail, this rich, complex, sometimes challenging and always fascinating history of Seattle and a key part of its musical heritage is now foregrounded on the streets and sidewalks where it all happened.

And who knows, if you close your eyes and listen carefully, you just might catch a few long-ago notes still floating on the breeze.

You can hear Feliks every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle鈥檚 Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O鈥橞rien, read more from him鈥�here, and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast聽here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks鈥�here.