In the mid-1950s, Seattle was host to the little-known music recording legacy of Jay F. "Joe" Boles. A fraction of his discography includes The Ventures, The Wailers, Cab Calloway, Big Jay McNeely, Buck Owens, The Fleetwoods, Robert "Bumps" Blackwell, Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby Darin, Elmer Gill, The Frantics, Dave Lewis, Pat Suzuki, and Duke Ellington. But how he got there has a unique story.
Seagulls barking, steam whistles, and trains rolling over rickety wood piling. People yelling instructions and warnings to trucks backing up. Below, the water laps quietly. The trains nearby routinely blast their air horns at 120 dB. The smell of sawdust, fish, the exhaust of burnt diesel, and dented pots full of clam chowder. Thousands of sailors roam around on shore leave. Longshoremen unload cargo ships from Japan and Taiwan. Bales of bananas are pried loose from deep in a ship's hold, lifted with cranes onto trucks or huge carts, and then rolled to nearby wharves for immediate triage and redistribution.
