Quotes & Reviews

“I’m making so much money it’s getting hard to sing the blues” so sings Little Bill on his wonderful new CD, ‘ One Night Only’. Lets hope Bill never makes that much money! ‘One Night Only’ is the 9th record by Little Bill and the Blue Notes since 1988. It is the first record with new guitarist Billy Stapleton. Often referred to as a northwest legend, the new record reminds us that Bill is not resting on his ‘legendary’ reputation. ‘One Night Only’ is alive and vital. It captures the renewed energy that has been present in the bands recent live performances. It is a great record.

The record features Bills vocals and bass joined by his drummer and friend for the past 40 years Tommy Morgan. Dick Powell is a special guest on keyboards, harp and B-3, a regular guest with the band it is a treat to hear Dick on the B-3 as well as harp and keyboards. New guitarist Billy Stapleton fits the band like a glove bringing new energy and moving with ease from well-known classic’s like “ Bye Bye Blackbird” to little Bill originals like “ Lincoln Continental Blues”. Throughout the record he shows that he deserves his reputation as one of the regions best.

This band has jelled! From the opening track,“ Grits Ain’t Groceries’ where Bills smooth vocals flow seamlessly into Billy’s guitar and Dicks B-3 to the last track, the classic, “ Shake Rattle and Roll” with great guitar and harp, ‘ One Night Only’ is a gem. The band is awesome. And at the heart of it all is Bill Engelhart. His bass is smooth and his vocals are perfect if he is singing Ray Charles slow blues, “ Loosing Hand”, the standard “Bye Bye Blackbird”, or his own up tempo“ Cherry Red”.

Bill dedicates this record to the memory of Mister Jenkins, the original 1955 Blue notes and the George Washington Carver American Legion Hall. He takes time to recognize his past. The new record reminds us that he is a vital force in the present and will continue to be in the future. “ One Night Only” is a great recording of one of the greatest northwest originals.

Rev. Dave Brown

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Articles

Little Bill found his voice thanks to idol Ray Charles

By Sharon Wootton Special to The Herald
Article appeared in Everett Herald Friday, June 25, 2004

Bill Engelhart's hero died recently, so he might play an extra Ray Charles song or two during Little Bill and the Blue Notes' performance at this weekend's Shoreline Arts Festival.

At age 17, Engelhart finagled a backstage pass to meet Charles. The conversation went something like this:

Charles: "Are you a musician?"

Engelhart: "Yes."

Charles: "What kind of music do you play?"

Engelhart: "The blues."

Pause.

Charles: "You're white, aren't you?"

Engelhart: "Yes."

Charles: "It doesn't matter if you feel it."

The Mountlake Terrace resident has taken Charles' words to heart for 48 years.

His ballad "I Love an Angel" made the national chart in 1959. One of the first Northwest rhythm and blues groups, Engelhart's band still plays 150 shows a year.

Engelhart has played with drummer Tommy Morgan since 1962, with Dick Powell for several years after he tired of fronting his own band and with guitarist Billy Stapleton.

In 1988, Engelhart was given the Washington Blues Society's lifetime achievement award, but he hasn't rested on that laurel. He was awarded the 2003 SBS award for best songwriter.

His first gig was for $9 a night. "I thought I'd died and gone to heaven," Engelhart said. Then he heard blues music on the radio.

"I found what I had been looking for and I didn't even know I was looking."

Charles was the icing on the cake.

"Ray Charles could take any song, whether gospel or country or a ballad like 'Georgia' and make it a Ray Charles song," he said.

Understanding that eventually helped move Engelhart from trying to sound like musicians he admired to finding his own voice.

"I spent years trying to sound black ... it finally occurred to me that I didn't need to do that. There was already a B.B. King. Once I stopped trying to be like someone else ... I got more compliments on my singing. I learned I could be influenced by other musicians, but at some point, I had to be me."

Engelhart recently covered Charles' "Drown in My Own Tears" at Seattle's New Orleans club.

"I did what he said, listen to the words. I shut my eyes and sang and listened to the words. I opened my eyes and people were standing up. I'm 65 and I learned something."

Engelhart's band performs at 4 p.m. Sunday.

The Shoreline Arts Festival

* The event is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday at the Shoreline Center, 18560 First Ave. NE. in Shoreline. Activities include music, dance, juried art shows, a photography show, artists and crafters in action, a film festival, book sale and food booths. Admission is free.

* Entertainment includes Little Bill and the Blue Notes, one of the showcased bands, performing at 4 p.m. Sunday. Also on tap are The Toucans, Mud Bay Stompers, Grupo Son, Annie Rapid and the Bill Anschell Quartet.

"Little Bill" Engelhart A Northwest Blues Original

Article appeared on the cover of WBS Bluesletter January issue
By Chuck Cox
    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&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.
    While doing the interviews and the other research for this article I've discovered that Bill is not only an incredibly talented musician and composer who is dedicated to the Blues, he's also one hell of a nice man. We in the Northwest are blessed to have an original the likes of Bill Englehart in our midst. Lets all hope that life for him keeps happening in wonderful ways.