Local legend in the Northwest blues scene, ‘Little Bill' Engelhart, dies at 86

Yahoo

28-05-2025

Bill Engelhart, a leader and star of the Northwest blues scene, started his music career as part of a teenage band in Tacoma with an unlikely sound.
As teenagers, Engelhart and his friends attended performances and met musicians in the area as they hoped to break into the music scene, said Peter Blecha, a historian familiar with Engelhart after interviewing him over many years. He was a natural charmer, Blecha added, and at one show, a young Engelhart was invited onstage to play with B.B. King and his band.
'B.B. King was so enchanted by Little Bill,' he said. 'And so this is where they really got inspired to play rhythm and blues music, and they started calling themselves, not a rock band, but they were a rhythm and blues band, and it was fairly unusual for teenage white guys in the '50s.'
Engelhart, better known as 'Little Bill' from the band Little Bill and the Bluenotes, passed away at a hospital near his family home in Mountlake Terrace on May 16. He was 86 years old. He is survived by his wife Janis; his two children, Anthony and Lisa; his four granddaughters Amanda, Makayla, Camille and Mariah; and his sister Patty Erwin.
Engelhart was a 'king of the scene' of Washington state's rhythm and blues music, Blecha told the News Tribune, adding that he was a guitarist, vocalist, and bassist throughout his career.
Engelhart was born on March 17, 1939, in Brainerd, Minnesota. The Engelhart family moved away from Minnesota around the time Bill was six years old. They first moved to Montana and later settled in Tacoma, his wife Jan Engelhart told the News Tribune.
Bill Engelhart first picked up a guitar around that age upon hearing his uncle play, and by age seven, he was taking guitar lessons at the Honolulu Conservatory of Music in Tacoma, Blecha said.
His father moved the family to Chelan, where he hoped to open a barbershop — it was there that Engelhart contracted polio around the age of ten, Jan Engelhart said.
In the midst of the polio epidemic, before a vaccine had been developed, the family rushed Engelhart to the hospital, where he was put into an iron lung and eventually recovered enough to move to a wheelchair. Later he used a leg brace and cane. He was affected by his bout of polio for the rest of his life. He used mobility devices and eventually returned to a wheelchair as he reached his older years.
Engelhart got his start on the Tacoma music scene as a founding member of the Bluenotes, a 1950s rock band that first played at local dances, Blecha said. The name came from an older group who played occasionally at a local veterans hall in Tacoma — Engelhart had met the band members at a local vocational school and played with them for a while prior to forming his own band, Blecha told the News Tribune. His musical talent was largely self-taught, Jan Engelhart said.
Although he loved music since he was a child, the Bluenotes were only formed after Engelhart and his friends watched the movie 'Rock Around the Clock' starring the rock and roll group Bill Haley & His Comets in 1956; as they left the theater in downtown Tacoma, the friends decided then and there to start their own group, Blecha said.
'The Bluenotes started with sort of a DIY ethos because that was the answer back then; there weren't band managers, there were very few record labels, there were very few recording studios, and nobody was hiring teenage bands,' Blecha said. '.... So they sort of did what they needed to do, and they had posters designed and printed, and they ran around town like bands have done ever since then, stapling to telephone poles, and they would rent a hall.'
The Bluenotes became popular locally, and in the spring of 1959, they recorded some songs at Joe Boles' Custom Recorders in West Seattle and were soon signed to Dolton Records, according to a HistoryLink article authored by Blecha.
The standout song was Engelhart's 'I Love An Angel,' which he wrote and performed. Dolton Records decided to rename the band 'Little Bill and the Bluenotes' and released 'I Love An Angel,' which entered the national Hot-100 list by June 1959, according to HistoryLink. Soon, Little Bill and the Bluenotes were playing all around Washington and in neighboring states, Jan Engelhart told The News Tribune.
That 1959 record stood out because it captured the 'original Northwest sound' that was pioneered in Tacoma, which featured a focus on saxophones and piano with a minimal guitar component, Blecha added.
'What was great about Little Bill's single, 'I Love An Angel,' is they hit three (saxophones), so it's got this rich saxophone choir for the middle section,' he said. '... It's just outstanding, but that also helped influence subsequent bands that came up in the wake of the Bluenotes, because everybody wanted two saxophones.'
Blecha said the record label began to change the band's dynamic as they sent Engelhart on tours without the rest of the band, and by 1960, Little Bill and the Bluenotes had split, with Engelhart joining an Auburn-based band called the Adventurers, Blecha said. In 1961, the Adventurers were the first teenage band to release a version of the popular song 'Louie Louie,' he added, but a rival band called the Wailers rush-released their own and overtook Engelhart's version to become a regional hit.
Engelhart left the Adventurers by 1961 and eventually formed a new trio called Little Bill and the Bluenotes in 1963, which recorded Engelhart's first album 'The Fiesta Club Presents' in 1964. He was traveling often for performances during the earlier years of the new Bluenotes, Jan Engelhart said. During one trip to Oregon, she took a bus to join him and they were married by a justice of the peace in Coos Bay on Jan. 16, 1963, when she was 19 years old and Bill was 23.
Jan Engelhart said they first met through mutual friends in 1962. After their third time meeting, Bill Engelhart began asking her out to the Evergreen Ballroom just outside Olympia, where his band was playing Saturday nights.
'He said to me, 'I'll tell you what. You tell me when you've got a night free and you can go,' Engelhart said. '.... So we did, and it was that very night that Bill told me, he turned to me as we were sitting in the car, and he — first date — and he said, 'I love you.' And I went, 'Oh, wow, okay!' and that, that was it.'
Their first child was born in 1963, and their second followed soon after, she said. She added she was attracted to Engelhart's determination to not let his disability stop him from pursuing his dreams as a musician and his dedication to their understanding of each other. He was a loving husband, a great father, and an uplifting presence, she said.
She said she admired Engelhart's courage deeply, adding that it helped support their family when their son developed dystonia at the age of 14. The children looked up to their father and emulated his persistence, she said.
Bill Engelhart also liked to make jokes, and would annually write a letter telling outlandish, fictional stories of his year to an aunt in Puyallup, which she would then read out loud to the family on Christmas Eve, Jan Engelhart said.
'He was a joy to all of us and he made us laugh. He said to me one time, you know, he said, 'You keep me around just because I can make you laugh.' And I said, 'Oh yeah, that's part of it, for sure,'' she said.
In 1969, Bill Engelhart wanted to go to California, so the family packed up and spent three years in Anaheim, where he also earned his GED, Jan Engelhart said. There, he enjoyed playing with country music bands, Blecha added, but he soon moved back to Washington, where he spent some time in retail selling instruments in a music shop in Seattle's University District and returned to playing shows as part of Little Bill and the Bluenotes.
Engelhart was a 'very soulful performer' and was popular in the Washington scene, recalled his friend and guitarist Billy Stapleton, who played with Engelhart for more than 25 years in the later decades of the Bluenotes. In those last few decades, Engelhart was a bassist, Blecha added.
'Bill was just playing everywhere, so he was kind of a local legend,' Stapleton said. 'Nobody ever booked as many gigs in a year as Bill, I mean, he would routinely book 135, 155 days a year.'
Engelhart's arrangements were complex and he had an amazing memory for music and lyrics, Stapleton said, adding that he was impressed upon first seeing him play. Engelhart was known as a strict band leader who expected his musicians to be prepared and professional.
Stapleton said Engelhart was a mentor who he looked up to, adding that Engelhart taught him music theory and its applications, which massively changed his guitar playing. 'I thought I was a blues guy, but playing with Little Bill was the master class in rhythm and blues,' he said.
'I was dying to join the Bluenotes,' Stapleton said. 'He was funny, he said he gave me the short list, the short list of songs to learn, and that turned out to be 125 songs — he had something like 300 or more songs in his repertoire.'
Little Bill and the Bluenotes played at Fat Tuesday celebrations during the 1990s and 2000s in Pioneer Square in Seattle, Stapleton recalled, and while the college students packed into the area would be initially skeptical of Engelhart and his wheelchair, he said they were always impressed by the end of the show. His shows were known for being lively and exciting, Stapleton added, noting that Engelhart knew how to connect with an audience and often played nonstop.
'Playing music with him is something I'll miss forever,' he said.
The band remained a fixture on the blues scene in Washington and Engelhart continued to play shows and festivals until 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Jan Engelhart said. He was diagnosed with dementia in 2018 but continued to perform until he could no longer remember the changes to the songs he was playing, she added.
'I was always so proud of him because he made his own decisions about his life. Nobody had to wrestle the keys away from him,' she said. 'Nobody had to say, 'Bill, we just can't play music with you anymore,' — he wanted to quit while he was ahead, and I told him, I said, 'I think that was a very courageous thing to do.''
He picked up painting abstract art in his later years, much of which he sold or gifted to friends and family, Jan Engelhart said, adding that some paintings continue to decorate her house.
Engelhart was also an incredible, non-stop storyteller, Stapleton said, adding that he was willing to talk to, teach and welcome anybody. Engelhart released two memoirs, one titled 'Next Stop, Bakersfield' in 1999, and the other titled 'So Anyway …' in 2005. His legacy will live on from the key role he had in the local music community, Blecha added.
'The blues scene wouldn't have been what it became without him, and the energy and talent that he brought,' Blecha said. 'So he is missed, and I think will be missed as the days go on.'
Since his passing, fellow musicians have begun to pay tribute to Engelhart with performances and songs dedicated to him and posts on Facebook, Jan Engelhart said.
There will be a memorial for Bill Engelhart in the early afternoon of July 13 at the Spanish Ballroom at the Tacoma's McMenamins Elks Temple. Jan Engelhart said the exact schedule will be released soon, and that she welcomes all family, friends and fans of 'Little Bill' to join them in honoring him.