In Step with Peter Blecha: ‘Stomp and Shout: The Untold Story of Northwest Rock & Roll’

By Richard Hao, Youth Director At Large

Edited by Laura Lee Bennett, Executive Vice President

From Nirvana and Pearl Jam to The Sonics and “Louie, Louie,” Northwest rock ’n’ roll shaped music history. On September 13th, 2025 at 10:30 am at the Old Redmond Schoolhouse, the Redmond Historical Society welcomes author and historian Peter Blecha, who uncovers the hidden bands and R&B roots that connect Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, and Jimi Hendrix to the “Original Northwest Sound.” Blecha is speaking courtesy of Humanities Washington.

We caught up with Peter for a bit of Q&A.

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RHS: What inspired you to pursue history, and was there a defining moment that ignited that interest? 

Peter Blecha: Well, I've always loved history. Even as a kid, I remember my dad taking me out to historical markers on the highway. Just a few blocks from my house in Olympia, there was a historical marker that said that the Oregon Trail stopped here. That really blew my mind. I liked those types of shows growing up, and How the West Was Won was a favorite movie. That stuff has always fascinated me. I remember one summer, when I was in elementary school, I had the choice of either going to a summer camp at the lake or a history camp at the Washington State Capitol Museum. I chose the history camp. There were plenty of lakes around where I could go swimming with friends and inner tubing down rivers. But history camp sounded cool, and it was. The instructors there led us through local history and showed us amazing artifacts from the museum. So, I got all interested in historical artifacts as well. That's where it all began for me. 

RHS: What specifically led you to pursue musical preservation, or the history of music?

Peter Blecha: Music always attracted me. Even before The Beatles came out, I realized rock ’n’ roll was unique, different from the songs you’d sing in church, around the campfire, at Christmas, or from my dad’s country and western records.

When The Beatles and Rolling Stones came along, I thought, That’s the music. Although I wanted to be a drummer, I started out on the piano. My parents said it was better to start with piano to learn to read music, so I was forced into lessons for a while. By fifth grade, I switched to drums, and became a pretty good drummer. I took private lessons, played in school orchestras and bands, and by high school, I was forming rock bands. I played in three or four bands in Olympia before moving to Seattle to attend the University of Washington.

Throughout all this time, I realized that there was a difference between British Rock on TV and local bands. And I thought, Hey, the local bands are good too. That [revelation] started a lifelong interest in studying local bands and the record companies they worked with.

RHS: What are some of the more surprising or unusual stories that you uncovered while doing research? 

Peter Blecha: Well, in the world of antique and rare guitars, I have a reputation for being the guy who discovered three different electric guitar brands made in Seattle or the Northwest in the 1930s, the decade when electric guitars were first invented and marketed. I was interested in where the electric guitar came from, and when I poked around, I discovered a previously undocumented brand from Seattle called Audiovox, made by a local guy. He was copied by another guy across town in the 1930s, who made the HN BRT brand of electric guitars. Then there was a third guy in the small Cascade mountain town of Peshastin, just outside of Leavenworth, a gentleman named Copic, who designed, made, and marketed his own brand. So three different brands of electric guitars had been lost to history. Not one word had been written about any of them. When I started publishing essays, it became an exciting phenomenon in the electric guitar world because my cover feature essays were appearing in Vintage Guitar Magazine. That was pretty amazing.

RHS: Has music in the Pacific Northwest really changed with time? 

Peter Blecha: Well, you know the music makers in the Northwest have basically contributed to every genre and era. The first record ever made in the Northwest was by a dance band and dance orchestra, recorded for a major label that came through town with their recording equipment. And there were a lot of those popular dance bands in the 1920s and ’30s. By the 1940s, when country music started getting strong, there were a lot of country bands here that made records. In the 1950s there were rockabilly bands, and jazz bands from about 1920 on. So the Northwest has participated and contributed to all that over time. During that time, they developed an original “Northwest Sound,” the first definable regional sound that people agree started here. By the rock ’n’ roll era, you had every splinter faction of rock ’n’ roll happen up here, just like other places: country rock, disco, heavy metal, punk rock, grunge, alt-rock, Americana. 

RHS: You’ve been giving this talk through Humanities Washington for the last two years. What questions do audiences tend to have about your work? 

Peter Blecha: My presentation, which is called Stomp and Shout: The Untold Story of Northwest Rock, is based on my research for my most recent book. One question that comes up often is: How come there were so few females in the early rock groups? It’s a fair question. Back in the late ’50s and ’60s, there were a couple female rock ’n ’roll singers, but girls were not encouraged to play drums or guitar. I had three sisters, and all of them were encouraged to play violin or piano.

By the time I got into orchestras in fifth and sixth grade, and all through junior high and high school, there were a lot of female fellow students in those bands, but they mainly played flute or clarinet. It was rare to see a female trumpeter, though we did have one female drummer. That was just the way it went. Times have changed, though. Now, especially since the grunge era and the riot grrrl movement out of Olympia, there are plenty of all-female bands and plenty of mixed bands with both males and females. 

RHS: What’s your favorite instrument and genre of music? 

Peter Blecha: I guess my favorite instrument would be the guitar. I don’t have a favorite genre because I like the best of the best, the oldest of the old, and the newest of the new. I like cutting-edge stuff, the weirder the better, but it has to have a beat. That’s my rule, I don’t listen to amorphous, rambling electronica where you can’t find the one. I’m still beat crazy.

RHS: What’s one single song that really uses beats you’d recommend that many people might not know about?

Peter Blecha: That’s tough without looking at my playlists, but one of my all-time favorite guitar songs is Rumble by Link Wray & His Wray Men. It’s a late ’50s rock’ n’ roll instrumental, and supposedly one of the first examples of guitar distortion. It has cool chords, a great riff, and then the guitar freaks out at the end, sizzling and frying, making strange noises. It was really weird for so early in rock’ n’ roll, and it made the song stand out.