His kidneys failed him, but former Tacoma cafe owner hasn’t lost his passion for jazz and blues
Most people have no idea, Dennis Ellis says.
A saxophonist in a well-known local blues band, Ellis says he’s not the type to put his “business in the street.”
“I feel good, most of the time,” Ellis said.
At 65, Ellis has played saxophone with the T-Town Aces for nearly two decades.
Since 2016, Ellis also has been on and off kidney dialysis.
While a 2017 transplant briefly alleviated the need for the treatments, like Ellis’ original kidneys, the new organ eventually failed, too.
Now, there’s a chance Ellis — who suffers from a rare disease that causes blood clots to form — will rely on kidney dialysis for the rest of his life.
Not that he’s complaining.
“I mean, I have my issues, but I’m blessed,” Ellis said through his handlebar mustache this week after spending more than three hours that morning hooked up to a dialysis machine at Northwest Kidney Centers in Fife.
While Ellis might not talk about his significant health issues very often, at least not publicly — and certainly not in the pages of the local newspaper — he decided to do so recently.
Ellis said he hoped to put a human face on the hundreds of thousands of patients across the country currently on kidney dialysis, particularly since March is National Kidney Month, and March 12 is World Kidney Day.
At the same time, the working musician knows a thing or two about the value of promotion, so he wasn’t shy about sharing his ulterior motives.
Ellis has long been working to bring more quality jazz, blues and Americana music to Tacoma, and he figured a brief turn in the spotlight might help that cause as well.
Ellis has a passion for music, and he prefers to share it every chance he gets..
For local music fans, if Ellis’ name doesn’t ring a bell, his jazz- and blues-related endeavors likely will.
In addition to wielding a saxophone for T-Town Aces, Ellis has booked local stages with jazz and blues acts for the last several years. Though the event was postponed due to coronavirus concerns, Ellis had a hand in planning Tacoma Jazz Walk, which was scheduled to take place Saturday, March 7, for example.
Before that, Ellis owned and operated B Sharp Coffee House downtown in Opera Alley for roughly four years.
While providing caffeine to the St. Helens district masses, B Sharp also gained a reputation for being one of the best live jazz destinations in the area.
Shows at the small space were often packed with 70 or 80 people, Ellis said, proving to him that jazz has a viable audience in Tacoma.
When Ellis opened B Sharp in 2013, that was precisely what he hoped to do — even though his kidneys were in the process of failing at the time.
“Mostly, it was a passion for music and there not really being places that I thought did a good job of it,” Ellis said of his inspiration for opening B Sharp, which closed in 2017 — the day before went in for a kidney transplant.
Shortly before B Sharp closed, Ellis said, he spent five weeks in the hospital with blood sepsis, including being placed in a medically induced coma. At the time, it was the latest in a string of serious health complications that began when blood clots led to the loss of much of his intestines.
The medical troubles significantly contributed to his decision to close the coffeehouse and local music venue.
“It was an opportune time to close it down,” Ellis said. “It’s a problem running a business when you’re not there a certain amount of time. It was just getting to be too much for me.”
Today, Ellis scratches his musical itch by playing with the T-Town Aces and booking shows for other jazz and blues acts all over town. It keeps him busy and keeps his passion burning.
Often, he gets an early start, he said.
Three times a week, at 5:15 a.m., Ellis is the first patient to arrive at Northwest Kidney Centers in Fife.
Once staff at the facility hook him up, he “can’t move around” for nearly four hours, he said, so Ellis usually brings books, music and his laptop — so he can get busy working on booking and promotion.
It’s not easy, Ellis acknowledged, not that he seems to spend much time dwelling on it.
“I’ve got a lot of things that keep me motivated,” he said. “I look at dialysis as, ‘This is keeping me alive, so that I can experience this other stuff.”
Like the music he loves.
“I take it as that, and I take it as a blessing that I’m still here,” Ellis said.
This story was originally published March 7, 2020 at 7:05 AM.
