Tribute to Prentice "Pete" Douglas
Douglas Beach House
Half Moon Bay, CA
October 4-5, 2014

In some ways, for all of us who time and again came to the Douglas Beach House in Half Moon Bay to listen to some of the finest jazz anywhere, the passing of Prentice "Pete" Douglas—the absence of the man who sat along the east wall sucking on his dead pipe, listening to the music, sometimes kicking his leg out when something in particular caught his fancy—left an empty space in the hearts of all. So, what do you do when such a passing crosses the stage of time? What do you do after fifty years of great music, driven by Pete's spirit, when it is gone? You tap into his musical soul and have a two day tribute to one of the most gifted men who ever produced live jazz, and built the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society at the Douglas Beach House into a world class venue.

For two days the gathering of newcomers and regulars who had been coming to the beach house for more than 40 years to hear jazz and classical music came together for two sold-out days of music. The musicians came not because they were being paid a handsome sum for their work, but because they honored and respected the late Pete Douglas. In one room of the beach house there ran a continuous video of interviews with Pete, the history of the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society and the beach house from its early days back in the 1950s when it was a simple little bar facing Monterey Bay, commentaries, and in the end, a beautiful look at its beginnings right up until the present. Sitting on the desk that Pete sat behind both on concert days and during the week, was a book at least four inches thick with photographs of many of the musicians who had played the Bach over the past 50 plus years.

Linda Goetz, Pete's personal assistant, opened both Saturday and Sunday's lineup. It was Goetz, the woman with unfailing strength who followed through on everything, the one person who was always at the door directing things, handling emergencies, and overall the one behind the scenes who made it all happen. Saturday's masters of ceremonies were Tim Jackson of the Monterey Jazz Festival and Kuumbwa Jazz Center and famed Clifford Brown Jr. of KCSM Radio. Sunday's master of ceremonies was musician