Northwest Dance Music Association, Inc.

Northwest Dance Music Association was actually started as a record pool called the Electric Canary Record Pool in 1977 by Dana (Taylor) Andrews.  Dana had a falling out with John Bush, another Seattle DJ who started the very first record pool in the Pacific Northwest in 1975/1976 (that was the Northwest Record Pool that used to be located in the block directly across the street from the Paramount Theatre on the same block as the old Spags Tavern.)  The Electric Canary quickly grew as the premier record pool and gained the top jocks in the city at the time.  Some that I personally remember besides Dana were Paul Curtis who worked at the Brass Door, Fritz "Dunki" Jacobs, "Simple" Simon (who was one of the first jocks to actually slip-cue & "cut" songs together with lightening quick speeds), Tom Lathrop and Ed Barthel (who shares with me the distinction of being one of the original remaining Electric Canary members).  By 1979, the 25 member Electric Canary pool was the driving force behind the majority of the music that you heard in the Seattle nightclubs.  1980/1981 were pivotal years for us.  As one of the best jocks in the city, Dana was spinning at the top nightclubs in the area, the Brass Door (which later became the Brass Connection) and the Monastery, and the success meant celebration.  Of course in the 70's, we all celebrated with substances.  Eventually it caught up with him and Ramon Wells lead a group of us: himself, Larry Woerlich, Tom Lathrop, Paul Curtis and myself, and made a deal to take over the record pool to ensure its survival as well as get the bills paid.   Ramon is lovingly referred to as the "Godfather" of Northwest Dance Music -- he had previously been a DJ in the Portland, Oregon area and had helped them set up their first record pool down there.  It was Ramon who helped us draft a set of by-laws and helped guide us as we changed the ownership from private to a non-profit association governed by a Board of Directors (very much in line with the very first record pool in New York that was formed by David Mancuso, but that's another story.)  We renamed the pool to Seattle Dance Music Association and Ramon was elected as our Director for the first 2 years of our new existence.  At the same time, Ramon was a Billboard reporter for the Seattle area and when Billboard became nervous about the amount of supposed power that a Billboard reporter who was also a record pool director might have, they forced everyone to make a choice; Ramon choose to remain a reporter and that is when I became the pool director the first time (1983/1985.)  The next significant change was an expansion to 35 members representing more of the Seattle/Tacoma area around the 1985/86 time period.  Towards the latter part of the 80's, we chose to expand the pool even further to represent the Portland market, hence the name change to Northwest Dance Music Association and our final roster expansion to 50 members.  Though we have downsided that number to 40 members due to the recent flucuations in the music industry, we cover all of Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, Montana as well as Alaska; basically the entire Pacific Northwest north of the California/Oregon state border and everything west of the Dakotas.  Our focus remains the same, breaking great music in all genres of dance music at street level and making sure the whole world knows about it!  Though Dana passed away in 1989, we know he is watching us from that great dance-floor in the sky and smiling.  Our other spiritual guiding force, Ramon Wells, moved to New York City where he lives and works running his own label, Dot Dot Dot Records.