Bill Haley and his Comets, The Dave Lewis Combo, at the Evergreen Ballroom, Olympia, WA, June 28, 1956

Before Elvis Presley (1935-1977) was the King, there was Bill Haley (1925-1981) and His Comets. Pat Mason (1907-2001), a Northwest promoter, helped book Bill Haley and His Comets at the Evergreen Ballroom but struggled to find a sufficiently popular local, white band to open for them. Following the success of the Dave Lewis Combo with audiences at traditionally white venues, Mason booked the band and marketed them as the “Northwest’s greatest Rock ‘N’ Roll Band.” This worked well for the Dave Lewis Combo, who went on to open for other nationally recognized musicians such as Ray Charles (1930-2004), Little Richard (1932-2020), and the Platters.

Although he was born in Texas, Dave Lewis (1938-1998) grew up in Bremerton and then Seattle after his family moved to the area for work in the 1940s. Both of Lewis’s parents were musicians, and his father even gave music lessons to a teenage Quincy Jones (b. 1933), but Lewis took most of his inspiration from his mother’s piano playing and the music of Ray Charles (1930-2004), who he would sneak into nightclubs to see perform. Lewis’s first band was the Five Checks, a Doo-Wop vocal group, which he helped create to perform in the Edmond Meany Junior High talent show. The group was popular enough that they continued to perform at school pep rallies and other assemblies.

Moving on from the Five Checks, in 1955 Lewis formed and led the Dave Lewis Combo, a Rhythm and Blues band which began playing small venues but eventually became popular enough to help desegregate the Seattle music scene. At the time, Seattle musicians were represented either by AFM Local No. 76 if they were white, or AFM Local No. 493 if they were black. The white union, No. 76, had historically laid claim to venues in downtown Seattle to the exclusion of black musicians in No. 493, but the popularity of the Dave Lewis Combo led to them booking events in ‘white’ venues. When the band eventually booked a show at a premier venue, Parker’s Ballroom, in 1956, No. 76 union leaders threatened to boycott and picket the venue unless the show was canceled. The ballroom’s manager refused to cancel and responded with his own threat to never book No. 76 musicians again if the union representatives did not drop the issue. Ultimately, the Dave Lewis Combo was able to perform at Parker’s Ballroom and within two years the two unions merged into one, integrated union.

By 1962 Lewis had dissolved the Dave Lewis Combo and started a new band, the Dave Lewis Trio, with Jerry Allen (b. unknown) and Don “Candido” Mallory (b. unknown). The group was more oriented toward playing at nightclubs than touring, but they produced several regional hits including “J.A.J”, “Little Green Thing” and “David’s Mood (Part 2)”.