RIP: Little Bill Engelhart

It saddens me deeply to learn of the passing of Bill Engelhart, aka “Little Bill” of the Blue Notes. He was a talented musician with a beautiful soul that I was fortunate to call my friend. He had a lot of great stories, many of which were shared in his two autobiographies*.

As I mentioned on this blog, Little Bill was an extremely important player in the legend of the song LOUIE LOUIE.

Bill was the founder of the Blue Notes, the very first white teenage rock ‘n’ roll band based in Tacoma, Washington, which was a truly radical idea at the time. Back then, these guys had the nerve and gumption to rent their own halls and produce their own shows “D.I.Y.” style before the term was even conceived. During one particularly memorable show, the dancehall was overbooked and the Tacoma police threatened to shut down the event. The band pleaded with the police to play “just one more song,” which lasted something like 30 minutes, which led the city of Tacoma to forbidding the Blue Notes from ever playing within city limits again.

When the Blue Notes went into the recording studio to record what would have been their first record, Dolton Records of Seattle, took an interest in their recordings and chose to release one of their songs “I Love An Angel,” renaming the band as Little Bill and the Bluenotes, which didn’t sit well with some of the other members of the Blue Notes. Two of the members – Buck Ormsby and Robin Roberts, left the Blue Notes to join the Wailers, another Tacoma band that was getting a lot of attention.

In 1961, both Little Bill and the Wailers released cover versions of a then-obscure song titled “LOUIE LOUIE,” written by Richard Berry.

Little Bill released his LOUIE LOUIE recording under the name of Little Bill with The Adventurers and Shalimars on the Topaz Records label, and the Wailers released a LOUIE LOUIE recording by (their part-time singer) Rockin Robin Roberts on their artist-owned label, Etiquette Records*.

Both of these 1961 recordings could be considered the “missing link” between Richard Berry’s 1957 recording and the Kingsmen‘s 1963 recording (with an honorable mention going out to Paul Revere & the Raiders, who also released a 1963 recording of the song).

And the rest, as they say, is history . . .

I’m glad I was able to attend Bill’s 80th birthday concert at the Triple Door in Seattle in 2019, which also celebrated his 63 years as a professional musician. I believe that might have been his final concert before he retired from music in 2020.