⬇️'Little Bill' ENGLEHART⬇️
& The Bluenotes
When you think of Blues Musicians in the Northwest one of the first names that comes to mind is "Little Bill" Englehart. After all he has been a fixture on the music scene here since he first started playing in the mid fifties.
He's managed to survive the excesses of the sixties, the disco of the seventies, the urban cowboys and the techno pop of the eighties and in the process has become one of the premier players out there today.
In fact Bill has become somewhat of a Blues "Icon" who's looked up to by younger musicians and seasoned veterans alike as someone that's been there and paid the dues.
In addition to all of the above Bill is a consummate professional, believing that he owes each and every one of his audiences no matter how large or how small the absolute best performance that he can give.
Born in Minnesota in 1939, Bill moved to Tacoma with his family when he was about four or five years old. He first began to be interested in playing music at the age of ten or eleven while listening to his Father's cousin who would come over and play guitar at the Christmas parties put on by his Grandmother. Bill's early influences were interestingly enough country musicians.
People like Hank Willams and Moon Mullican who were playing a sort of Blues of their own. In fact Bill credits the similarity in chord progressions between the two types of music with his being able to pick up the Blues so easily. Bill's first gig was a school dance when he was about fifteen years old. The vocational school that he was attending was looking for a band for it's dance and called for auditions. Bill seized the opportunity, took his guitar to school and a career was born.
& The Bluenotes
(1CD)
BIOGRAPHY
When you think of Blues Musicians in the Northwest one of the first names that comes to mind is "Little Bill" Englehart. After all he has been a fixture on the music scene here since he first started playing in the mid fifties.He's managed to survive the excesses of the sixties, the disco of the seventies, the urban cowboys and the techno pop of the eighties and in the process has become one of the premier players out there today.
In fact Bill has become somewhat of a Blues "Icon" who's looked up to by younger musicians and seasoned veterans alike as someone that's been there and paid the dues.
In addition to all of the above Bill is a consummate professional, believing that he owes each and every one of his audiences no matter how large or how small the absolute best performance that he can give.
Born in Minnesota in 1939, Bill moved to Tacoma with his family when he was about four or five years old. He first began to be interested in playing music at the age of ten or eleven while listening to his Father's cousin who would come over and play guitar at the Christmas parties put on by his Grandmother. Bill's early influences were interestingly enough country musicians.
People like Hank Willams and Moon Mullican who were playing a sort of Blues of their own. In fact Bill credits the similarity in chord progressions between the two types of music with his being able to pick up the Blues so easily. Bill's first gig was a school dance when he was about fifteen years old. The vocational school that he was attending was looking for a band for it's dance and called for auditions. Bill seized the opportunity, took his guitar to school and a career was born.
Bill's first job as a R'n'B and Blues musician came as a result of that dance. A couple of the other musicians from the school band played regularly at The George Washington Carver Legion Hall in the Hilltop area of Tacoma. They liked what they had heard in Bill's playing and asked him to join them. So, at the ripe old age of fifteen, Bill began playing Blues as the only white, and the youngest, member of a band that consisted of men who were all in their forties and fifties
On many nights he was also the only white person at the club. What better way could there be to be introduced to playing this music? Although this was a great introduction, Bill's love for the Blues had actually started to blossom a bit earlier when he began to listen to Bob Summerrise a Tacoma disc jockey that would broadcast on radio station KTAC from a studio that was atop a burger joint on 6th Avenue. The guy was playing early Rhythm and Blues that not too many people around here had heard before, artists like Ray Charles, B.B.King, Ruth Brown and Bobby "Blue" Bland.
Bill listened to this "new" music and as he puts it "was turned around" by it. Unfortunately not too many other people were getting turned around yet, so in 1957 when Bill formed his own band, the first version of "The Blue Notes," it was more a rock and roll band than it was Blues. In fact in the late fifties when Bill recorded his first record it was a ballad called "I Love An Angel " that went into the top 100 nationally.
I wouldn't want to give the impression that things have always gone smoothly for Bill in his career when they haven't. Actually there were a couple of times that he gave up music altogether and tried making a living in other ways. Once he sold pianos for a year and another time he took six or seven years off and worked a variety of jobs, including Factory Worker, Disc Jockey and Sales Clerk at a record store. Luckily for us his addiction to applause and his love of playing called him back. Even when he came back to music he was forced to play many types of music other than the Blues in order to make any money at all. Not exactly what he wanted to do, but you have to eat, and it put food on the table.
Throughout the years, while he has been forced to play many other types of music to survive, he has always found ways to satisfy his need to play the Blues. In the sixties if a musician dared to do a Blues song at a club he may not be playing there again, so consequently there wasn't a lot of Blues being played. To combat this Bill would play his "normal" date and then go to a place like the old "Black And Tan" club on 12th and Jackson in Seattle and do an after hours Blues show.
Although this may sound grueling, you have to remember that back then there wasn't a Blues Society to promote the Blues or a radio station that was devoting time slots for the Blues. Since it was so much harder to find an audience that wanted to hear the Blues, a musician had to work harder and go to wherever the people were in order to play and be heard. It wasn't until about twenty years ago while playing a steady gig at a club called The Mint , with Joe Johansen, that Bill was able to play all Blues.
After that job ended, in order to try to make a living, Bill put together a fifties rock and roll revival band. After about five years he couldn't stand it any longer and decided to go do what was in his heart. It's been the Blues ever since.
Currently Bill has two versions of "The Blue Notes" that he is performing with. There is the full version, complete with horns, that we are all used to seeing and then there is the Trio that consists of Bill, Mark Riley on guitars and Tommy Morgan, Bill's drummer of almost forty years. Tommy first started playing with Bill in 1962 when he walked into a club where the Blue Notes were playing and asked if he could sit in. Bill and Tommy had met before and he had heard him play a couple of times so, while not expecting much, Bill said sure he could play a couple of tunes.
What Bill didn't know was that Tommy had been to the Oscar Peterson school in Toronto Canada since the lasttime that he'd seen him. That night Tommy, as Bill puts it "played his ass off," and on the spot he fired his current drummer and hired Tommy. The ironic thing about this is that the fired drummer had actually gotten the job for the band. The next week when the band came back to the club to play, there was the old drummer, only now he was the club's janitor.
Today Bill says that he couldn't imagine playing music without Tommy and in fact wouldn't. The professional relationship that these two started back then has developed into an extremely close and special friendship that's evident to anyone around them.
Bill recently completed a deal with Merrimack Records to have his last two recordings distributed on a national level. Although he looks forward to selling more CD's, it isn't the opportunity to make money that has him excited, it's the larger audience that will be listening to the music that he loves so much. In fact the reason that he decided to go with this company is that the owner, Joe Melnikas, didn't come to him promising great record sales, instead he talked about the music and getting it into the hands of new listeners throughout the country.
A nationally recognized writer, Paul de Barros, who has written for the Seattle Times and Downbeat Magazine, and has authored a great book about our local music scene called "Jackson Street After Hours," has agreed to write the liner notes for the Naked Blues CD. This in itself will help to open a few doors to radio stations around the country and get the music played. Don't get me wrong, Bill wants to make money as much as any of us do, it's just that at this point in his career, having people hear his music is as important as the financial rewards.
At almost sixty, Bill is still playing around 200 nights a year which includes some trips that can wear out the younger musicians that tour with him. A great example of his "laid back" style of touring is the review that he put together last summer with Dick Powell and Nicole Fournier. On one weekend they played The Palace in Winthrop on Thursday, a club in Walla Walla on Friday, a festival in Joseph Oregon on Saturday, got up on Sunday morning drove 300 miles or so to Portland, played there that day and then drove home to Seattle that night.
I've heard that while some of the other members of the tour are still recuperating, Bill is already planning next years schedule. He is also writing a monthly column for The "Blues to-Do's" and teaching music to selected students one day a week. In addition to all of that he's on the phone almost every day setting up his future dates (as of now he figures that he's booked through July of next year). Bill toyed with the idea of retiring in a couple of years but realized that he enjoys playing music too much to give it up yet , so that idea was thankfully short lived.
For now, he says that he'll keep playing as long as people come out to hear him. He isn't planning on recording a new CD any time soon and in fact wonders if he ever will. With Naked Blues having turned out so well, he feels like he may never be able to equal it. He says that It's almost like this is the recording that he's been working towards all these years. As for additional future projects, other than booking dates, Bill doesn't have any concrete plans. He says that the one thing that he's learned throughout the years is to get out of the way and let life happen.