Tacoma has spawned legions of rock bands during the last half-century, including a few that have achieved international stardom. But it all started with Little Bill & the Bluenotes in the mid-’50s.

The band’s namesake, Bill Engelhart, will be honored Saturday night at Tacoma’s Rialto Theater. The tribute concert will feature the Randy Oxford Band, Patti Allen, Heather Mueller and other performers featured on a new tribute CD called “Big Blues for Little Bill.” And, Engelhart will perform his band’s 1959 hit, “I Love an Angel.”

Engelhart lives in Mountlake Terrace. And while he may not be as widely known as some of his ’50s rock peers, insiders consider him among the most important figures in Northwest rock and blues.

“I spent eight years with his band, and he became my mentor in blues,” said Randy Oxford, who produced the tribute CD. “So for many, many years, I’ve been wanting to do a tribute to him and his music.”

“You’ve got to say the Sonics are very influential all around the world; same with the Ventures,” said Pat Lee, a local rock and blues historian who interviews Engelhart in a video clip included on the new CD.

“But around here in the Northwest, working musicians, they don’t talk about the Sonics, the Ventures, ’cause those bands are kind of out there (playing elsewhere),” Lee said. “They talk about Bill because Bill’s around here playing 100 dates a year.”

Washington Blues Society President Eric Steiner said Engelhart’s five-decade career would be amazing by itself, even without any hits. “Even Muddy Waters didn’t do that,” he said. “Every Little Bill show is special. He plays a variety of music; not just pure blues, but he can play rock, pop. He has a very diverse set list. But I’d like to think of him as Washington’s ambassador of the blues.”

GARAGE DAYS

Years before he became the patriarch of Washington’s blues scene, Engelhart helped lay the foundation for Northwest rock. And those involved trace it all to a fateful encounter at the Sunset Theater, a movie house once located at 2502 Sixth Ave., in Tacoma (currently Posh Home).

Engelhart turned 70 on St. Patrick’s Day. But he was just a kid at Jason Leigh Junior High School the day he went to the Sunset with his friend, Frank Dutra.

They went to see “Blackboard Jungle,” a movie that helped spark the rock revolution as it introduced the masses to the hit “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets. After the movie, the buddies bumped into Buck Ormsby and Lasse Aanes, whom they recognized from school.

“We got to talkin’ to these guys, and it turned out that Lasse played the drums and that Buck played the steel guitar,” Engelhart said. “Frank also played the saxophone. The more we talked, (we decided) let’s get together.”

Tacoma’s seminal garage band held its practice sessions at Englehart’s garage on South Prospect Street.

R&B ROOTS

In Engelhart’s 1999 biography “Next Stop, Bakersfield,” the Bluenotes date to 1956. But the band’s name actually came from a previous R&B outfit, featuring much older musicians, that Engelhart said he played with at the George Washington Carver American Legion Hall. He recalled earning $9 per gig and playing to mostly black audiences.

James Bush’s “Encyclopedia of Northwest Music” refers to that short-lived version of the Bluenotes as the Northwest’s first rock band. However, others point to the second incarnation of the Bluenotes – featuring Engelhart, Ormsby, Aanes and Dutra – as a more direct link to the Fabulous Wailers, the Ventures and the garage-rock bands that followed.

But Engelhart is quick to acknowledge his rhythm and blues roots. “I really loved the black music, R&B and all of that,” Engelhart said. “When we started a white Bluenotes, that’s kind of what we were doing, black music. Well, we’re playing black music for young white kids who aren’t really into that. The Wailers came along, and they played real white rock ’n’ roll. So they actually ended up being a lot more popular than my band.”

DIY PIONEERS

Not that the Bluenotes weren’t popular, quite the contrary. The band’s fame grew in those early years, along with its lineup.

Ormsby recalled inviting “Rockin’” Robin Roberts to join the band after spotting him standing on a bench and singing to a small crowd at the Puyallup Fair (a Little Richard song, he thinks.) Buck Mann and Tom Giving also were added on baritone and tenor sax.

“There were no other bands like us in Tacoma – none,” Engelhart said. “And Robin says, ‘Why don’t we throw a dance?’ And so we started doing that, and we started making pretty good money.”

“We started teen dances,” Ormsby said. “Nobody else was doing it. We rented our own halls, put up our own posters. I remember riding a bus and going to some of the malt shops and all that kind of stuff and putting up an armful of posters.

“It turned into a big deal, you know. It only cost you a quarter at the time we started to get in, and then it grew. I remember everybody got mad because we raised it up to 50 cents.”

The Bluenotes headlined at several regional venues, including the Tacoma Armory and the Little J.E.M. Cafe in Fife. Engelhart and Ormsby point to winning a 1957 talent competition held at the Crescent Ballroom as an early career tipping point.

In 1959, the band had saved enough money for a studio session in West Seattle. With 30 minutes left on the clock, recording engineer Joe Boles asked band members they had anything left over; they did. The band played “I Love an Angel,” a track with vocals that Engelhart had written.

While the band figured the other songs would be hits, Boles was impressed with “Angel” and called Bob Reisdorff and Bonnie Guitar, owners of Seattle’s Dolton Records. The label had scored a hit with Olympia doo-wop group, the Fleetwoods,’ “Come Softly to Me.”

Reisdorff and Guitar came to the studio and liked what they heard. But Reisdorff didn’t think the band’s name was catchy enough. “Then Buck Ormsby speaks up and says, ‘Well, Bill’s grandmother calls him Little Bill because his grandfather’s name is Bill,’” Engelhart said.

So Little Bill & the Bluenotes it was. “I might as well have tattooed it on my head,” Engelhart added, laughing. “There was a time I tried to work under the name Bill Engelhart, and it just didn’t work for me.”

A FLEETING HIT

Influential Seattle disc jockey Pat O’Day played “I Love an Angel” on KJR-AM, and the record took off, spending several weeks on the national pop charts.

“It was just great,” Engelhart said. “I had a lot of fun. Our records were on the radio, and we were like these little celebrities around town.”

Eventually, the early Bluenotes lineup broke up, with Ormsby and Roberts defecting to the Fabulous Wailers, a Tacoma band that had its own radio hit with “Tall Cool One.”

“But, boy, when it ended it damn near killed me, because I was so young,” Engelhart said. “It’s like I’m 19 and I’m a has-been. So it got a little rougher after that. … I know other people who had problems like I did with the one-hit thing.”

Post-stardom depression took a toll on Engelhart, who resorted to substance abuse. “The worst part was that first couple of years afterwards,” he said. “I medicated myself to get through that, which doesn’t help at all. And, in 1987, I said that’s it for me with the bottle and the pills and everything.

“I haven’t had a drink since, which is something I’m really proud of. I think it made me a better person, and I think it made me a better entertainer, a better musician – clearheaded.”

Crucial to his recovery, Engelhart said, was an epiphany he had during a family therapy session in the early 1980s. A counselor asked him about his musical career, and the emotions came flooding out. “I just choked up,” Engelhart said. “I couldn’t even talk. And I’m sure my wife, my daughter and my son all thought I’d snapped.”

Engelhart told the counselor he wished he’d never had that one hit. “She said something to me that completely changed my thinking about the whole thing,” he recalled. “She said, ‘How many of your friends had a hit record?’ And there was maybe one or two. It made me realize I should be grateful for what I had and not be greedy.”

There were times when Engelhart wouldn’t play “I Love an Angel.” “It’s like I was embarrassed or some dumb-ass thing,” he said. “But that statement she made to me completely turned me around. I realized how lucky I’d been to have the one hit.”

Needless to say, Engelhart will play the song on Saturday.

Ernest Jasmin: 253-274-7389

Tribute concert will benefit dystonia research

Proceeds from Saturday night’s Little Bill & the Bluenotes tribute concert and a new tribute CD, “Big Blues for Little Bill,” will benefit the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation.

Dystonia is a movement disorder that causes muscles to involuntarily contract and compete with one another, often causing victims to contort into awkward positions.

About 300,000 North Americans have the disorder, according to the Dystonia Foundation, including Bill Engelhart’s 46-year-old son, Tony.

“At 13, he started to suffer from writer’s cramp,” Tony’s mother, Jan Engelhart, recalled. “I took him to the doctor, and he couldn’t find anything wrong. So I thought, well, he’s just giving me a line because he’s 13 and doesn’t want to do his homework. And then his speech began to slur.”

Tony Engelhart’s condition eventually, making it more difficult to write and communicate. “But the other part of Tony is he’s gone on with his life,” Bill Engelhart said.

Bill Engelhart said his own condition – he suffered from polio as a child – made it easier to relate to his son’s condition. “It’s really hard for anyone to be patient when somebody is trying to say something and you can’t understand them,” he said. “Everyone has that impatience, you know. I think maybe I’ve had a little more patience because some things are harder for me to do, you know.”

Ernest A. Jasmin, The News Tribune

A Celebration of Little Bill & the Bluenotes

WHO: Little Bill & the Bluenotes; Randy Oxford Band with Patti Allen; Henry Cooper; Blues Vespers All-Stars with Leanne Trevalyan, Paul Green, Mark Riley, Jho Blenis, Jim King; Billy Roy Danger & the Rectifiers; Merilee Rush with Rusty Williams

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: The Rialto Theater, 901 Broadway, Tacoma

Tickets: $19 to $50; proceeds benefit the Dystonia Foundation

Information: 253-591-5894 in Tacoma, 1-800-291-7593 out of town or www.broadwaycenter.org

Learn more

“Little” Bill Engelhart has written two books, “Next Stop, Bakersfield” and “So, Anyway,” both available from the Tacoma Public Library.