Victor Aloysius Meyers (September 7, 1897 – May 28, 1991) was an American jazz bandleader and politician. He served for 20 years as the 11th Lieutenant Governor of Washington and an additional eight years as the tenth Secretary of State of Washington.
Early life and education
Born in Little Falls, Minnesota, Meyers was the fifteenth of 16 children. His mother was a pianist; his father Morrison County treasurer. Meyers became a multi-instrumental musician, with drums as his first instrument. His family moved to Oregon. In his teens, Meyers played drums professionally at a Seaside, Oregon hotel.
Career
Music
At age 21, he put together a 10-piece band. In 1919 Meyers was given a two-year contract to lead the house band at the Rose Room in Seattle’s Hotel Butler. The band enjoyed local success, and Butler's contract continued to be renewed. In 1923, Brunswick Records chose the group to record during the record company's West Coast field trip, the first records billed as "Vic Meyers Hotel Butler Orchestra". The band made further series of recordings for Brunswick the following year, and toured nationally before settling in Seattle, where he played on the radio. In 1927 his band first got a residency at the Trianon Ballroom in the Belltown/Denny Regrade area north of downtown Seattle's leading dance venue of the time, well known for its flouting of Prohibition. the same year the band made the first of a series of recordings for Columbia Records which would continue through 1929.Articles p4
Meyers' compositions as a musician included "Ada", composed with Harold Weeks and Danny Cann; "Isle of Dreams", composed with Weeks and Oliver Wallace; and "I'm Happy Now That You're Gone", composed with Al Thompson and Harry Von Tilzer.
Early political career
By 1932, Meyers had left the Butler Hotel and was holding forth at his own Club Victor back up in the Regrade, often nearly broke, and continuing to get in trouble with the authorities enforcing the Prohibition laws. Covered constantly by the local press, he was one of the city's best-known figures. That year was a local election year, and assistant city editor Doug Welch and some other newspapermen at the Seattle Times decided to urge Meyers to enter the city's nonpartisan spring 1932 mayoral race against business candidate John F. Dore (a trial lawyer) and a field of "fatuous has-beens and never-wases". Welch saw Meyers as a joke candidate he could use as an anchor for satiric stories on the race.
The Times trumpeted Meyers entry into the race with an eight-column page one headline, and gave him daily coverage. Meyers chose the meaningless campaign slogan "Watch 'er Click with Vic". He drove a beer wagon around town—this in the midst of Prohibition—with his band playing "Happy Days Are Here Again"; he started out campaigning in shirt sleeves, to prove he was not a representative of the vested interests; later he campaigned in a tuxedo, silk scarf, top hat, velvet-lapeled overcoat, and kid gloves. His speeches were often parodies of Dore's. He came out in favor of graft. His answer to the problems of Seattle's ailing streetcar system was to add hostesses. He appeared at a Shriners' candidates' forum at the Olympic Hotel dressed as Mahatma Gandhi, leading a goat, sipping goat's milk and munching raw carrots, and wearing gold-rimmed eyeglasses.
In the mayoral election, Meyers finished sixth in a field of ten.
Lieutenant governor
After briefly going back to being a full-time bandleader, he decided to run for lieutenant governor in the fall 1932 election, this time without Welch and the Times. Actually, he originally decided to run for governor, but didn't want to pony up the $60 filing fee; the filing fee for lieutenant governor was only $12. He continued to use humor (for example, repeating the Gandhi bit) and music (playing saxophone at his own campaign appearances), but also campaigned more seriously. He appeared on an Indian reservation talking about how the Indians were not allowed to vote. He came out for pensions, child welfare, and unemployment compensation. He gained the Democratic nomination in the September primary, thereby becoming the running mate to Clarence D. Martin; both went on to win in November in conjunction with Franklin D. Roosevelt's landslide victory in the presidential election. Meyers and his band played at the inaugural ball.
