Joan Houston, ’66, Sings in Ballard

Submitted by Sylvia Nogaki and Joan Houston

Singer and actor Joan Houston has a message for anyone who didn’t make the Franklin High School choir -- “I auditioned for the Franklin choir and didn’t get in,” recalls Joan, Class of ’66. (On the other hand, she happily recalls being selected her class’s Most Popular Girl.) Despite not getting into the Bel Canto Choir, Joan kept singing.

Joan recently returned to Seattle from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where she’s lived since 2010, to participate in the Seattle Cabaret Festival. She and her pianist, Bob Bruneau, appeared at Blake’s in Ballard, where they were given a true Quaker welcome by at least forty classmates who showed up the first night. “It was heartwarming,” Joan says, recalling the thrill of seeing so many familiar, smiling faces in the audience. It was, she says, like a mini class reunion. 

Joan performing.

She used to sing around the house when she was young, then around the apartment as she grew older. A roommate heard her singing and suggested she take lessons from jazz singer Joni Metcalf, who was teaching at Cornish School of Allied Arts. Joan signed up, taking both singing and acting lessons for about a year and a half. Gradually she started appearing as a guest singer at different venues around Seattle, such as Rosellini’s 410, the Broadway Restaurant, and the Four Seasons Hotel. After Metcalf stopped teaching, Joan studied with pianist and vocalist Primo Kim.

And when she wasn’t singing, Joan was working. At one point, she was in charge of fundraising for the multistate, Northwest region of the United Negro College Fund.

Eventually she moved to Puerto Vallarta, where she had been vacationing for more than a decade and where she had friends. Again, she was a guest singer at various venues.

Left to right, first row:  Susan Tripp, Marilyn Henry, Betty Lau, Lori Chinn, Joan Houston, Wendee Ong. Second row:  Bob Nathane, Bob Henry, Betty Ragudoes, Barb Madison, Sally Sanders.

Then one day, at the beach, she met Bob Bruneau, also a former Seattle resident who had been a key player in the Seattle Gay Men’s Chorus. He asked her to sing with him. This was the start of her first steady gig. One day when Joan and Bob, who also has been her valuable vocal coach, were rehearsing, people came by to listen. Bob informed them that Joan was rehearsing for a play, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Joan got the role—in part because “the role was meant for a Black person…they immediately put me
into the show,” replacing the White woman who had been cast. Soon Joan was appearing in a string of musicals—sometimes right after finishing her singing gig. She remembers changing out of her glitzy high-heeled shoes she wore for singing, putting on some flip flops, and running down the street to get dressed for her role in whatever play she was in at the moment. Joan was so much in demand that, at times, she’d be doing more than
one show at once.

“I would be in a show and also be rehearsing another show,” Joan recalls. “It was a lot of work. I enjoyed it, however…” There’s no more acting in her future, she says, just singing. The show must go on.

“I’ll probably just keep singing until Bob retires,” she says, noting that her pianist has planned to stop performing in about five years. Meanwhile, she’s something of a minor celebrity in the resort town, Joan admits, noting that people often stop her on the street to greet her, tell her they enjoyed her show, or promise to attend one of her shows soon. Her audience includes a wide swath of people she knows, from her landlord to her doctor to friends she’s met while performing.

It was a far cry from Joan's earlier life in Seattle before performing became her passion. In Puerto Vallarta, most of her close friends are people she’s met in the theater. “They came into my life,” says Joan, “and they never went away.”