Then and Now: Lawrence ‘Dutch’ Groshoff
Lawrence “Dutch” Groshoff was born around 1903 and grew up in Spokane’s Catholic schools, showing a talent for music at a young age as he learned piano, guitar and banjo. He would become friends with classmate Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby.
In the early years of the 20th century, social dancing brought people out in huge numbers whenever a live band was playing. Dancing to the syncopation of swing music grew through the 1920s, filling dance floors even as the country adopted Prohibition, a total ban on alcohol consumption, starting around 1920. It lasted until 1933.
The Charles Whitehead Jazz Band was the toast of the town when he and his band first played Spokane in 1918. So backers helped Whitehead, a drummer and vocalist, build Whitehead’s Dancing Palace, a massive brick building at 333 W. Sprague Ave. The open floor plan accommodated 1,200 dancers with a bandstand in the middle of the floor.
Whitehead’s Dancing Palace opened on Christmas Eve 1919 and was an immediate hit.
Barely out of high school, Groshoff and young Crosby hung out there, learning the latest songs. Groshoff first played his banjo in Whitehead’s band in 1923.
Before electric amplification was available, strummed chords on the banjo set the rhythm for dancing, cutting through the other instruments better than an acoustic guitar. Banjo is still heard in some types of jazz, but it mostly has been replaced by amplified guitars.
In 1924, the dance hall was renamed the Garden Dance Palace.
Crosby left Spokane for Hollywood in 1925 and asked Groshoff to go.
“It’s a rat race away from here. We’re good people here,” Groshoff told a newspaper reporter. “That’s why I stayed.”
After years with Whitehead, Groshoff led the house band at the Spokane Elks Club from 1937 to 1952 and played hundreds of dances at clubs and resorts. Groshoff taught guitar and banjo to many students.
In 1941, the Garden was turned into a bowling alley, then it closed in the mid-1960s, and the building would go on to be used by Avis Rent-A-Car, Hal’s Stereo and other businesses.
Groshoff died in 1989. Several members of the Groshoff family have continued his musical legacy. Great-grandson William Dutch Groshoff, who goes by the stage name “Billy Dutch,” is an up-and-coming singer-songwriter living in Nashville, Tennessee.