GODDESS OF THE FOLLIES

WENATCHEE FAMOUS: BOB GODFREY

Bob Godfrey in the 19A location on his last day March 31, 1990. Photo provided by John Godfrey

By Dustin Hays

The history of music in Wenatchee only goes back so far...

The first local band formed in 1897, 27 years after white settlers first came to the area. The Wenatchee World was founded in 1905… Most information about those early bands and musicians exists solely in what has been saved in the World’s microfilm archive. Unless a band lucked out and got their name misspelled in a two paragraph write up (a local rite of passage), the majority of what’s saved from the last 100+ years is from the live music ads that would run in the paper a few times a week.

“Live Music Tonite”, “Country/Rock/ Blues This Weekend!”, “Jazz For Your Enjoyment. 9 To Close”, “Dance This Friday To A Live Band!”

Almost all of the Wenatchee players from the 1950s and earlier are long gone. Most recently, the local musicians from the ‘60s and ‘70s are beginning to pass away more and more. Bands form and break up, venues are built and torn down. As is the case with most regional music scenes - the years go by and those names and stories fade from our collective memories.

For a guy that loves learning about the local music history of this valley, there’s a shrinking number of upper-classmen I can cold-call for stories and information about the Wenatchee music scenes of the distant past. Bob Godfrey was that missing link to our musical past. A drummer. A record store owner. The senior-most member of the Wenatchee music scene.

Born in Wenatchee on April 5th, 1928, some of Godfrey’s first memories of music were listening to the popular tunes of the 1930s and ‘40s on the local KPQ radio station. In 2014 he recalled to me “I first started really paying attention when the Big Bands were popping up.”

As the Jazz genre began to evolve through the 1940s, Godfrey picked up learning the drums, with popular Bebop & Jazz drummer Shelly Manne as an early inspiration. Godfrey stated in the school’s yearbook that his post-high school ambition was to “play drums in Sam Keppard’s ‘Hot-Cha-Rhythm’ Jazz Band.”

“After I graduated I got into the music biz”.

The first year out of high school, along with a small group of friends, Mark Sorely (KPQ salesman) and Bill Van Hoose (local bank teller), Godfrey booked Nat King Cole, then performing in the King Cole Trio, to play at the Wenatchee Auditorium.

Through the ‘40s, dances were held several nights a week at the Auditorium, one of the oldest venues in town. Hosting music and dancing since at least the early 1920s, the building sat on the east side of Wenatchee Avenue between 1st and 2nd Street. A long brick building, with an open dance floor and a raised curtained stage on the east end of the room.

The King Cole show was a huge success, the trio played to a sold out crowd that evening. Godfrey and his friends promoted a few more national acts to perform in town like the Herb Miller Orchestra & Stan Kenton and his Orchestra, but after several flops, they bailed on the whole venture. In the early ‘80s, the entire block was demolished to make way for the Stanley Civic Center, which currently houses the Convention Center and Numerica Performing Arts Center.

While working at Belmont Radio & Music (31 North Wenatchee Avenue), Godfrey started playing with a broader group of local players. “The returning veterans would have jam sessions, I would go to them, they’d say ‘why don’t you sit in’ - and I did.” In the years following, Godfrey played for several groups around town, playing at schools, private dances, grange halls, even at the Liberty Theater. Over the next decade and a half, Godfrey performed frequently with pianists Jack Brownlow and Glenn Isaacson, bassist Jay Anderson, trumpeter and bassist Jay McCament and saxophonist Don Lanphere.

Belmont Radio & Music (referred to, almost exclusively, by locals as “Belmont’s”) was owned by the father of Godfrey’s friend Don, Beany Lanphere and was one of two local music stores that occupied the Wenatchee Valley at the time, the other being Barnharts Music House (11 South Wenatchee Avenue). “Barnharts was like Belmont’s, but they had more pianos and sheet music.”

In 1950, still a salesman at Belmont’s, Godfrey married Mary Miller, a local singer. The two had been classmates in high school. Mary had been a member of the school choir, and after graduating, would sporadically join combos for live performances. Some time after the pair married, they appeared together as members of the John Prabucki Band.

A short two years later, he went into the service. “I was in the coast guard on the Great Lakes - in an icebreaker ship - but spent most of my coast guard career in an office building in Cleveland, Ohio”, doing payroll for the enlisted ship workers for the Great Lakes region. “Used a hand crank calculator and a typewriter!”

Back in Wenatchee by 1955, Godfrey bought the record department inside Barnharts. Changing the name of the record section to Bob Godfrey’s, he was there for a couple years until Barnharts was sold to new owners.

Godfrey and his wife Mary welcomed

Bob Godfrey behind the counter at the Barnharts shop location. Photo provided by John Godfrey Bob Godfrey smoking a cigarette inside a listening booth inside the Barnharts store location. Photo provided by John Godfrey

their first child, John, into the world in 1958. Two years later, in ‘60, their second child Sally was born.

During his time playing the more ‘adult’ rooms like the Golden Rooster Restaurant, the Kiltie Room inside the Columbia Hotel, and various clubs throughout town, Godfrey recalled “many of the musicians I played with were school teachers.” Guys like Cashmere High’s music teacher - pianist Larry Johnson, Wenatchee High’s music teacher - saxophonist Bob Yetter and Art Newman, a retired Wenatchee music teacher. “We’d play at the elks club a week at a time, and then three or four months later we’d play a week or two at the vets club - we played there a lot.” “Usually a trio or quartet.”

Godfrey’s friend Don Lanphere had lived in Chicago and New York in the ‘late ‘40s and within a few years recorded several records with Jazz trumpeter Fats Navarro, Saxophonist Stan Getz and Big Band leader Artie Shaw, gaining some notoriety in the Jazz world. After being arrested on a drug charge, his father brought him back to Wenatchee to work at Belmont’s. Lanphere continued to play around the Northwest and would frequently bring Seattle players to town for ‘jam sessions’ with Godfrey at the Golden Rooster.

Throughout his career, Godfrey was also a member of Wenatchee’s Musicians Union. During the few decades it was active, the Musician’s Protective Union, Local No. 233, served as an added layer of protection against promoters and venue owners that refused to pay or underpaid players. Where a non-union gig would pay each musician $5-$10 a night, members of the union were guaranteed $12. Godfrey remembered the Musicians Union as a bit of a joke, recalling that they were more effective in bigger cities.

After Barnharts Music House sold, Bob Godfrey’s moved across the street to its 2nd location (15 N. Wenatchee Ave.) between Anderson’s Hardware and Webb’s Clothing Store - the space had formerly been occupied by the Emerson Photography Studio. A fire on December 31, 1961 that originated in Anderson’s destroyed both the Hardware store and Godfrey’s shop. The building was torn down the following October. The spot still sits empty, between The Antique Mall and Mela.

Bob Godfrey’s third location was just down the street, in the Public Market (11 N. Wenatchee Ave). The Market neighbored Anderson’s Hardware to the south and suffered smoke damage in the fire, but reopened a few months later, with Godfrey’s occupying the rear left corner of the Market’s main floor. That location lasted a few years, after which, in 1966, the Public Market was sold off.

Godfrey then moved his record shop to its fourth and final location at 19A N. Wenatchee Avenue, where it would remain a local staple for the next 24 years.

Godfrey’s son John shared with me “Dad worked Monday thru Saturday. He would often go into the shop on Sundays to do some work without interruptions from customers and sometimes we’d get to tag along.” Mary Godfrey was the only other employee at the record shop, helping her husband during the Christmas rush every year. The few times the Godfrey family left on vacations, he would hire friends Paul and Pat Merriman to manage the business during their absence.

Bob Godfrey’s was beloved by multiple generations of local music lovers. From what I’ve heard, the shop had impressive Blues and Jazz selections, but probably most importantly, was one of the preferred spots to buy physical copies of both old favorites and the latest greatest hits. Bob Godfrey’s saw the final years of shellac 78s, the height of LP and 45 single popularity, commercial reel-to-reel tapes, cassette tapes, and the beginning of the era of the compact disc.

Godfrey’s son John had followed in his father’s footsteps, learning to play the drums from a very young age. By the mid ‘70s, John was playing locally in a band called Panorama, a nine-piece rock group in the same vein as national groups Blood Sweat & Tears and Chicago. John lives in Tumwater, WA now, and most recently played drums with Mike Hart & The Classic Vinyl Band.

This week, John recalled this about his family, “Sally really inherited the artistic genes of our mother, who was also quite the artist as a painter. Certainly thanks to our parents we were exposed to a ton of music growing up. Sally became an artist and I followed in my dad’s footsteps as a drummer.”

He continued: “My parents were both very influential in my own development as a musician. They didn’t force me to rehearse or teach me technique, they basically guided me towards what to listen for when listening to music. My dad would point out the nuances of a particular drummer such as Shelly Manne. How he was driving the band in a tasty non-intrusive way. My dad was the same type of player. Nothing fancy, just great feel and happy emotion when driving the band.”

Godfrey retired from playing the drums (at least publicly) sometime in the early ‘80s. “I stopped playing when all the guys I played with moved away from town.” The Wenatchee music scene had changed drastically over the course of Godfrey’s time playing locally. After the rise of rock n’ roll, the night-life scene in town was un-

Bob Godfrey and Don Lanphere at the Golden Rooster. Photo provided by John Godfrey Godfrey and his wife Mary (to his right) inside the 19A Record Shop. Sometime during the ‘70s. Photo provided by John Godfrey

The John Prabucki Band performing at WVC in 1947. Mary Miller singing, Godfrey on drums. Photo provided by John Godfrey.

recognizable to that of the scene 30 years prior. The Musicians Protective Union, Local No. 233 had fallen out of style decades earlier, and was absorbed by the Yakima Union by the end of the ‘80s. There were a couple local spots to see Jazz, but most of the local venues were filled with Hard Rock cover bands, and country acts. Godfrey never recorded any music, at least not for commercial release - some of his live performances were recorded on some level, but as of yet never shared with the public.

“I worked all my life on that 1 block”

In 1990, Godfrey turned 62 and retired from the ‘music biz’, selling his business to Dan Kuntz, a young customer and local disc jockey. Kuntz ran the shop as “Kuntz Music” for four years, before closing the store.

Up until a remodel early this year, the residue of metal letters that spelled out “Bob Godfrey’s Record Shop” were still visible on the facade of the building at 19A North Wenatchee Ave.

Running a record store in a small town is always a finite business venture. All told, Bob Godfrey’s lived on Wenatchee Avenue for 45 years. It probably helped that Godfrey never lost his sense of humor over all those years, a slogan used in a 1984 Wenatchee World ad read “Bob Godfrey’s Record Shop: Dying In Downtown Wenatchee Since 1955.”

His shop has been closed for more than 30 years now, but LPs with Bob Godfrey’s price tags can still easily be found at thrift stores across Central Washington. I found one a few months back, a hundred miles south, in Yakima.

Into his 90s, Godfrey still cited some of his favorite artists as Stan Getz, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey. Those Jazz greats from his youth had never lost his favor.

Godfrey passed away after a short illness on June 29th, 2022. Two months after celebrating his 94th birthday.

I first interviewed Bob Godfrey in 2014, way before my area of interest had broadened to all local music history - at the time, I was deep into my obsession with the ‘60s Wenatchee label Julian Records. I had blinders on. I was sitting in the living room of a local music legend - and all I wanted to ask him about were some small pressing 45s, put out by bands that had been inactive for 50+ years. I quickly realized the answers to my questions were inconsequential in the scale of Godfrey’s memory, but his recollections of other aspects of his life remained crystal clear.

Through two nauseating hours of “umm”s, “soo”s and way too many “innnteresting….”s, I unconfidently and entirely unprepared, asked him a scrambled series of questions about his life in music.

A handful of times in 2020, I called up Godfrey to ask him random Wenatchee music history questions; things only he and I would know about - names and venues that haven’t existed for the better half of the last century.

“Do you remember Chili Meyers?” “What about Rixta Will?” “Did you ever play at Triangle Ballroom?” “How often would customers break 78s?” “Where did bands load in at the Columbia Hotel?” “How bad was the sound in the Auditorium at H.B. Ellison.. It had to be awful, right?”

Those phone calls were always out of the blue, and he was always more than happy to reminisce about the old days.

My last call with Godfrey was more than a year ago. He told me stories of non-union Seattle pianists that local lounge rooms would hire, sax player Steve Laughery that he played with a few times through the 1950s, a short lived acetate cutter Beany Lanphere had in Belmont’s, and an old union secretary Connie Rose.

The phone calls with Godfrey are now a thing of the past, and as time goes on the list of questions I have to ask him will get longer and longer. To me, it didn’t feel like there was a 60 year gap between us when it came to talking about playing music. I saw him as my upperclassman. It’s all the same, no matter what decade, style or time signature you’re playing in. It’s guys and girls learning and writing songs, booking shows, loading and unloading gear in different rooms and playing hours upon hours to crowds of other Wenatcheeites, all for the love of music. I was honored to pick his brain as much as I was able to.

The quotes I’ve pulled for this column are from my 2014 interview with Godfrey. The surrounding information is from that interview and from notes I took during the phone calls I had with him over the last two years. Other tidbits were contributed by Godfrey’s son John. Other pieces were learned from Chris Rader’s impressive write-up she did on Godfrey in 2011, published in the Confluence Magazine Vol. 27, No. 4 (It’s fantastic - you can find copies in the Wenatchee Museum Gift Shop). C