John and Jan Sanders opened P.W. Hoseapples in Moscow, Idaho, in 1977 to the sounds of disco.
The spring of 1977 was the very height of disco in the United States. Hundreds of discos spread across the East Coast, especially in big cities. Hoseapples quickly became the finest disco between Seattle and Boise. It featured almost all of the characteristics of the classic big-city club scene. Three nights each week, Black, White, gay, straight, male, and female customers mixed seamlessly in a euphoric party atmosphere. Disco dancing combined with rhythm and blues, funk, and soul moves.
P.W. Hoseapples in Moscow was the premier disco on the Palouse in the late 70s.
(1979 WSU Chinook yearbook)
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights featured a jammed dance floor filled with enthusiastic and happy people enjoying the apex of the disco era. Wednesday night was reserved for “ballroom-style swing dancers” and “Country Western Night.”
The Sanders couple transformed the Hoseapples restaurant with an eclectic menu and lavish booths in the middle surrounded by tables around the perimeter. The booths featured plushly stuffed figures of iguanas and cacti. The adjoining bar had a large, rectangular, polished-steel dance floor, along with fancy drinks and the largest screen-projected video system in the area.
Under the moniker Disco Fast Eddie, I successfully auditioned as one of P.W.’s first DJs. In just under two years, I spun first on Thursday, then Friday and weekend nights. I also hosted at lunch (and waited a few tables), became music director, assistant manager, and finally general manager. In spring 1980, I left P.W.’s and completed a master’s in speech communication at WSU.
Disco in Pullman and Moscow brought together people for dancing and fun.
(1979 WSU Chinook yearbook)
P.W. Hoseapples enabled citizens of the Palouse, be they farmers or ranchers, college students, local businesspeople, or homebodies, to experience the deeply moving physical and emotional outlet that disco music and dancing provided among truly diverse crowds. P.W. Hoseapples epitomized the height of the disco movement via music that led to the wider cultural acceptance of rap, Latin style, and hip-hop, some of today’s most prominent musical formats.
Palouse disco dancing as featured in the 1979 WSU Chinook yearbook
Ed Lamoureux (’80 MA Speech) is an emeritus professor of communication/interactive media at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois.
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Disco days on the Palouse: some recollections, with a bonus drink recipe
More memories of P.W. Hoseapples on Facebook