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75+ Years & Still Rockin’!
On July 24, 1939 the doors opened, and fans flocked to, Seattle’s newest entertainment hot spot – a beautiful art-deco gem named The Show Box. 2014 marked the club's 75th anniversary, one of Seattle’s few extant entertainment venues that can lay claim to having provided local music fans with such an astonishing breadth of entertainment over the decades. From the Jazz Age to the Grunge Era to the current wave of Seattle exports – neo-folk and hip hop – the storied ballroom has featured shows by touring icons such as Duke Ellington, Muddy Waters and the Ramones — as well as those by homegrown talents ranging from burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee, to grunge gods Pearl Jam, to the current dynamic duo on a course for world domination Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.
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The Main Stage
The ballroom, established in 1939, still boasts its beautiful deco-style architectural details and an oak dance floor. The venue can accommodate up to 1100 guests in a standing-room configuration (and 300 to 600 people in various seated configurations), and is fully furnished with house sound and lighting systems, a professional kitchen, four full bars and a multi-level floorplan that allows for incredible sightlines.
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Kerns Music Shop
In 2014, the lounge (more recently known as "The Green Room") reclaimed the name it originally held in 1946 – Kerns Music Shop – when a local trombone player named Johnny Kerns opened the store front. It quickly became a gathering spot for musicians and music fans, many of which witnessed unique live performances there by up-&-coming stars such as Frank Sinatra, Harry James, Sarah Vaughan, and Nat King Cole, who each performed a song or two in the shop. Kerns Music shop supported and serviced musicians from the region’s top bands as well as upstart musical students like a young Quincy Jones who Kerns recalls getting his first horn there. This former store front is steeped in music history and restoring the name is a fitting way to commemorate and honor this history.
