-- by Kim Davenport My recent project - digitizing vinyl that has been hiding out in the collections of local libraries and historical societies - has uncovered another fun gem! This novelty song, The Doma Tacoma, was written by local musician Arel Thomas and performed by The Kicks, a short-lived early-1980's band, in honor of the... Continue Reading →
-- by Kim Davenport With thanks again to the Northwest Room librarians at Tacoma Public Library, I'm pleased to share audio of music by Joe Jordan from two 45-rpm albums that have been sitting in the library's basement archives since the 1960s. As I've previously shared here and here, Joe Jordan, a musician out of the... Continue Reading →
-- by Kim Davenport This is not as much as story about music as it is a story about Tacoma, community, and baseball. But before we get into all that, take a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_5Y9Qrn71s In my previous research into Joe Jordan (1882-1971), I'd seen reference to several songs he wrote for his chosen hometown of... Continue Reading →
-- by Kim Davenport As someone who enjoys researching local history, and who also happens to come from a long line of music teachers, it is not surprising that I have spent a substantial amount of time over the past few years exploring the story of Margaret Rawson Goheen and the choral program she developed... Continue Reading →
-- by Kim Davenport The image above is the 1915 passport photo of Joseph Zachariah Taylor "Joe" Jordan, who was born in 1882 in Cinncinnati, Ohio, and enjoyed the last few decades of his life in Tacoma, where he passed away in 1971. Joe Jordan was a composer, arranger and pianist who made substantial contributions... Continue Reading →
-- by Kim Davenport Many of the stories we've shared here are about homegrown Tacoma musicians. Occasionally, though, we stumble on an interesting coincidence of history, a moment in time when Tacoma played a significant role in the career of a musician from elsewhere. Such is the tale of how an appearance on Tacoma television... Continue Reading →
-- by Kim Davenport With a new school year beginning this week at UW Tacoma, the time has come for me to share the last of my posts relating to student work from last year's iteration of my Musical History of Tacoma course. I freely admit that the title of this blog post is not mine,... Continue Reading →
-- by Kim Davenport A few years back, I spent a good portion of my free time researching 'booster songs' about Tacoma, in preparation for a talk I gave in August of 2017. In the early decades of the 20th century, booster songs were published in cities around America as musical representations of civic pride.... Continue Reading →
-- by Kim Davenport For her final paper in my Musical History of Tacoma class at UW Tacoma, student Kaisa Cannon decided to explore her father's favorite band, Nirvana, and determine whether the band typically associated with Seattle had any roots in Tacoma. Even a casual devotee of the grunge group would likely guess the answer... Continue Reading →
-- by Kim Davenport For her final paper in my Musical History of Tacoma class this past Spring, UW Tacoma student Sunny Cada explored the vital role that music played in helping along the desegregation of the US military, specifically citing the example of musician Meltarrus Washington. Sergeant Meltarrus "Mel" Washington (1919-2007) came to Fort Lewis in... Continue Reading →
Tacoma Music History 