Record Store Day 2024 includes releases from historical Seattle jazz shows

Well before it was immortalized as the location of Pearl Jam’s first concert, the timeworn venue at the corner of Eastlake Avenue East and Denny Avenue (present-day El Corazón) catered not to rock ‘n’ roll but to jazz. The building operated as a short-lived club called The Gallery from 1972 to 1973, and in September 1972, hosted legendary soul-jazz organist “Brother” Jack McDuff for a multinight run.

Seattle DJ Jim Wilke, who retired from KNKX last August, brought his recording equipment to the venue on Sept. 13, 1972. Those tapes went into a box, the box into storage. This Record Store Day, April 20, McDuff’s Emerald City performance will again see the light of day when it’s released as a deluxe vinyl entitled, appropriately, “Ain’t No Sunshine: Live in Seattle.”

The remastered concert recording is a product of Reel to Real Records out of Vancouver, B.C. Headed by saxophonist Cory Weeds, the label resulted from a series of connections between Weeds, Wilke, jazz archivist Zev Feldman and Charlie Puzzo Jr., whose father, Charlie Puzzo Sr., operated Pioneer Square jazz venue The Penthouse from 1962 to 1968.

“Jim Wilke had a whole bunch of recordings,” says Weeds. “And being the organ freak that I am, as soon as I saw the McDuff I said, I need to hear that.”

Weeds thought the McDuff show, like most of Puzzo’s archive, was a Penthouse recording. When he learned it took place at a mysterious venue called The Gallery, he asked Seattle saxophonist Steve Griggs for research assistance. Griggs used microfiche copies of The Facts newspaper to pin down The Gallery’s address and dates of operation.

Apart from 10 sizzling organ numbers — including a cover of the titular Bill Withers piece — “Ain’t No Sunshine” comes with 19 pages of graphics and liner notes, including aerial photography of 1970s Seattle and an interview with one of the city’s present-day organ gurus, Delvon Lamarr.

“When I first heard Jack,” Lamarr said in that interview, “he had a serious groove about him that just spoke to me.” Lamarr said McDuff was a huge influence on his own playing: “Being able to solo and make it melodic and not sound technical. That’s the thing that I love.”

No less musically impressive is Reel to Real’s other forthcoming Record Store Day release, “Shelly Manne & His Men: Jazz from the Pacific Northwest.” Manne, a drummer and bandleader who has recorded with a who’s who of jazz savants — in 1957, he featured on albums from Quincy Jones, Stan Getz and Sonny Rollins — hit The Penthouse in 1966 with an experienced band that Weeds calls “a well-oiled machine.”

Feldman, who co-produced the Manne record, says, “It’s really important that we pay homage to Shelly Manne. He did an incredible service to this music and he doesn’t get mentioned enough.”

The Manne release consists of three tracks from 1958’s Monterey Jazz Festival, three from The Penthouse on Sept. 7, 1966, and three more from The Penthouse on Sept. 15, 1966. The Seattle recordings were engineered by Wilke and stored in the Puzzo archive.

“Every time we get a chance to do one of these journeys, these endeavors,” says Feldman, “I want to pull out all the stops. This archive from Seattle is so unique because of the giants that came through those doors. I want to realize more of it.”

Feldman’s favorite part of the journey? He visited Manne’s wife, Flip — whom he calls “a matriarch of the L.A. jazz scene” — in early 2020 and played the recordings for her. She died in 2023 at 102 years old. Reliving the music with her, says Feldman, was a special experience.

Feldman and Weeds both use the term “labor of love” to describe their jazz excavations. As part of the releases, they contact all the musicians’ estates — and in some cases, living band members — to make sure everyone who played on the records gets compensated. This can take “days, months or years,” says Weeds. He adds, “The margins on these projects are really small.”

As typifies a labor of love, the music, not the pay, is the thing. For Weeds, this goes double for Pacific Northwest projects. “Vancouver and Seattle are similar in a lot of ways,” he says. “We have diverse histories, and these recordings are another way of telling that. It’s important to keep this massive legacy of music in our respective cities alive. As we go through this internet age, where culture seems to be getting lost, we need to keep this stuff documented.”