Settling first into the segregated Sinclair Heights housing projects in the Navy port town of Bremerton, one of the Lewis's new neighbors was the Jones family whose teenaged son, Quincy, was a budding trumpeter. Lewis went on to become an early inductee into the Northwest Area Music Associations' Hall of Fame in 1989.īorn in Texas, David Eugene Lewis, and his family (including twin sister, Eunice), were part of a sizeable migration of African Americans who came to Washington State seeking work in the wartime years of the early-1940s. Then in the early 1960s the Dave Lewis Trio's infectious electric-organ-based instrumental compositions were fondly embraced by fans and fellow musicians - including young Jimmy (aka "Jimi") Hendrix - and after subsequently being recorded by such 1960s Northwest rock 'n' roll luminaries as the Kingsmen, Dynamics, Viceroys, Counts, Courtmen, Chosen Few, and Don and the Goodtimes, the tunes were firmly established as classic regional standards. By 1955 he'd helped found Seattle's first notable teenage doo-wop vocal group (the Five Checks), by 1956 his Dave Lewis Combo (as progenitors of what would become known as the "Original Northwest Sound") began establishing themselves as the region's most musically influential ensemble.
Dave Lewis was the singularly most significant figure on the Pacific Northwest's nascent rhythm & blues scene in the 1950s and 1960s.
0 kommentar(er)
