Lance Dickie
Seattle Times editorial columnist

        Toutle Cottage rocks. Working with four blues veterans, 19 young singers and musicians put on a high-energy performance of classic blues and rock tunes.
        They had mastered the lyrics and music in 16 sessions with James "Curley" Cooke's Pacific Northwest Blues in the Schools program.
         As good as they were, these bundles of talent will not be going on tour any time soon. Virtually all live in the maximum-security dormitory at Echo Glen Children's Center, the state juvenile-corrections facility at Snoqualmie.
        With a bright-yellow visitor's tag hanging from my coat, I joined a half dozen staff on the cottage sofas to watch the magic that four professional musicians - Cooke, Al Rowe, Albritton McClain and Doug McGrew - had worked with an ensemble of young felons.
       Two point to emphasize. They are young - early and middle teens - and they are serious lawbreakers. In their short lives, they have done enough crime to end up behind two heavy, locked doors and lots of high fencing.
       None of the other 160 or so Echo Glen residents was coming inside for a mini concert and only three performers had earned the privilege to mingle with the rest of the population.
        The whole campus is secure and monitored by close-circuit television, but Toutle Cottage is for the hard cases whose capital crimes or behavior at Echo Glen put them in bright-orange jumpsuits and isolation.

        They are from all over the state and are in for murder, sexcrimes, armed robbery, burglary - a lot of burglary - and manslaughter. They have done grievous harm to others and untold damage to themselves. Hard attitudes, cold hearts and not much reason to believe anyone gives a damn about them. They know it with a feral instinct for survival.
        The worst crimes, the troubled kids in the most-secure unit - so why do I tear up looking at their scrubbed faces and bright eyes? This is so embarrassing.
             Somewhere in the lyrics of Rory Galagher and Bill Withers and standards made famous by Willie Dixon and Albert King, I heard the work of a salvage operation set to 12 -bar blues.
            Even without playing a note, Cooke on guitar, Rowe on bass, McGrew on drums and McClain conduction the vocals had done plenty by showing up. They cared enough to be there, a powerful message all by itself.
           Chat with Michaela Hoyt, Echo Glen's school principal, or Karla Blake, an associate superintendent, and Blues in the Schools is a triumph of small victories, quiet gains and important lessons.
          Most of the kids have been tossed out of school, and none is used to working with others or cooperating with adults. Most have never succeeded at anything legal. Here, they are singing their hearts out and having fun - clean and sober without breaking the law. For kids with spotty academic progress, add in reading and memorizing the lyrics.
        Working together as a team toward a successful outcome is huge for these kids. They did it, and along with the congratulations they need to know that satisfied feeling is real. And they can do it again in the classroom and on the outside.