MEYERS and his HOTEL BUTLER ORCHESTRA, VIC

Homebase: Seattle, WA.
Stats: 1920s
Misc Notes: Victor Aloysius "Vic" Meyers (September 7, 1897 – May 28, 1991), was a Seattle jazz bandleader and Washington State Democratic Party politician. He served 20 years as the 11th Lieutenant Governor of Washington and eight as Secretary of State of Washington. Born in Little Falls, Minnesota, Meyers was the fifteenth of 16 children. His mother was a pianist; his father Morrison County treasurer. Meyers became a multi-instrumental musician, with drums as his first instrument. His family moved to Oregon. In his teens, Meyers played drums professionally at a Seaside, Oregon hotel. At age 21 he put together a 10-piece band. In 1919 Meyers was given a 2-year contract to lead the house band at the Rose Room in Seattle’s Hotel Butler (2nd Avenue & James Street) which was well known for its flouting of Prohibition. The band enjoyed local success, and Butler's contract continued to be renewed. In 1923 Brunswick Records chose the group to record during the record company's West Coast field trip, the first records billed as "Vic Meyers Hotel Butler Orchestra." The band made further series of recordings for Brunswick the following year, and toured nationally before settling in Seattle, where he played on the radio. In 1927 his band made the first of a series of recordings for Columbia Records. Later that same year Meyers got a residency at Seattle's leading dance venue of the time -- the Trianon Ballroom in the Belltown/Denny Regrade area north of downtown -- which would continue through 1929. Meyers' compositions as a musician included "Ada", composed with Harold Weeks and Danny Cann; "Isle of Dreams", composed with Weeks and Oliver Wallace; and "I'm Happy Now That You're Gone," penned with Al Thompson and Harry Von Tilzer. By 1932, Meyers and band was holding forth at his own Club Victor back up in the Regrade, often nearly broke, and continuing to get in trouble with the authorities enforcing the Prohibition laws. Covered constantly by the local press, he was one of the city's best-known figures. That year was a local election year, and assistant city editor Doug Welch and some other newspapermen at the Seattle Times decided to urge Meyers to enter the city's nonpartisan spring 1932 mayoral race against business candidate John F. Dore and a field of "fatuous has-beens and never-wases." Welch saw Meyers as a joke candidate he could use as an anchor for satiric stories on the race. Meyers was, of course, happy to have the publicity and he increasingly began to ignore the Times's gag writers and began to campaign seriously, but still finished only sixth in a field of ten. Then, after briefly going back to being a full-time bandleader, he decided to run for lieutenant governor in the fall 1932 election, this time without Welch and the Times. He continued to use humor  and music (playing saxophone at his own campaign appearances), but also campaigned more seriously. He gained the Democratic nomination in the September primary, and went on to win in November in conjunction with Franklin D. Roosevelt's landslide victory in the presidential election. Meyers and his band played at the Governor's inaugural ball. While Meyers first ran for lieutenant governor without even being clear on the duties of the office, he soon became adept at those duties, the most important of which was to preside over the Washington State Senate. He was re-elected five times before finally losing in 1952 in the Eisenhower landslide. During that time, he twice again ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Seattle, losing in 1938 and again in 1946. He later ran successfully for Secretary of State of Washington in 1956 and served two terms in that office before being defeated in 1964 after a scandal related to the mishandling of the petition for an anti-gambling initiative. Meyers entered the race to regain his position as secretary of state in 1976, but withdrew for health reasons, finally passing in 1991. Meyers was honored with an induction to the Northwest Music Association Hall of Fame (NAMA).

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