Look for the compilation album: * "

When critics first heard it in the late 1920s, they described it as "the sound Seattle made when the lumberjacks came to town."

By sixteen he’d scavenged a trumpet with one stubborn valve and taught himself phrasing from the street—emulating the tilt of a lamplight, the skitter of a rat, the sigh of a delivery truck. He gave himself the nickname “Alley Cat” because he moved like one: cautious, curious, and limber enough to vanish between fences. The name stuck after a raucous night in 1978 when he sat on a milk crate outside the diner and played through a thunderstorm. People left tips and stories at his feet; someone hung a neon sign that read ALLEY CAT above the crate for a week.

In the novel, Holden performs and later records "Alley Cat Strut" after meeting the young protagonists, Henry (Chinese-American) and Keiko (Japanese-American), in an alley behind the Black Elks Club.

Though the song began as a narrative device, it took on a life of its own: The Musical Project: Inspired by the novel, musician Steve Griggs launched the " Panama Hotel Jazz

Oscar set his trumpet case down on the wet pavement. He reached into his deep coat pocket and pulled out a crumpled paper bag. Inside was a remainder of a corned beef sandwich from the deli on Yesler.

Oscar Holden was a classically trained powerhouse known for a stride style similar to Fats Waller. While no original recordings of his music are known to exist today, his legacy lived on through his children, who became staples of the Seattle R&B and rock 'n' roll scenes. Why It Still Struts The "Alley Cat Strut" captures the spirit of Jackson Street