William Franklin "Bill" Deal (8 July 1944–10 December 2003), musician, was born in Portsmouth and was the son of Noah Deal, a restaurant proprietor, and Sarah Mabel Ridenhour Deal, who died on 1 January 1951. Introduced to music by his guitarist father, he began playing piano as a child and performed regularly with local bands while attending Woodrow Wilson High School. Deal met Ammon Tharp, a drummer, at a show, and the two teenagers began appearing together at local venues. Because of their limited set list, they repeated songs throughout their performance, leading a friend jokingly to suggest that the duo call themselves the Rhondels, a term suggesting a poem with repeated lines.
While Deal studied business administration at Old Dominion College (later University), the Rhondels continued to perform throughout southeastern Virginia and in North Carolina. Calling himself Bill Deal because it sounded hip, he played piano on Jimmy Soul's recording of "If You Wanna Be Happy," which topped the music charts in 1963. The Rhondels' polka version of the soul song "May I" became a regional hit and caused the band to be named one of the Tidewater's entertainers of the year for 1968. Gene Loving, a local disc jockey and promoter, took the song to Heritage Records, a New York City–based subsidiary of MGM Records, which signed Bill Deal and the Rhondels, as they called themselves, to their first recording contract. With Deal on keyboards and Tharp on drums (and both sharing vocals), the eight-member band included a horn section and played a style of soul and rhythm and blues usually called blue-eyed soul or beach music, which was closely associated with the shag dancing that was popular along the Virginia and Carolina coast.
Released nationally by Heritage, "May I" entered the Billboard music charts in January 1969 and steadily moved up until peaking at number thirty-nine in mid-March. It sold about 400,000 copies in the United States. The group's next single, "I've Been Hurt," reached position thirty-five in Billboard in mid-June. An international smash reportedly selling more than 1,000,000 copies worldwide, it reached the top of the charts in Chile and Mexico and number two in Argentina and Brazil. The Rhondels' third consecutive hit, "What Kind of Fool Do You Think I Am," peaked at twenty-three in Billboard late in September 1969. Their highest-charting song in the United States, it sold an estimated 750,000 copies and also climbed to number three in Germany. Their next release, "Swingin' Tight," rose to number eighty-five on the Billboard charts early in December. Their success during the year led Billboard to rank Bill Deal and the Rhondels eighth among new singles artists and forty-seventh among all singles artists for 1969.
The band's popularity continued the following year with "Nothing Succeeds Like Success," a song that by mid-April 1970 had reached sixty-two in Billboard. Although that was the last song to rank on the Billboard chart for Bill Deal and Rhondels, the group parlayed their success into performance dates across the country and in Canada. In June 1969 the band joined several other acts in playing at the Felt Forum, a concert venue at New York City's Madison Square Garden Center, and the following year they appeared on American Bandstand. During this time they also performed in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, as well as a three-week engagement in Mexico.
The physical and financial toll of touring caused the group to retire from the road early in the 1970s, by which time Deal co-owned a Virginia Beach nightclub called Rogue's Gallery. The group continued to perform regionally, but early in the 1980s he had tired of the music business, partly as a consequence of the murder of a band member. Deal sold his nightclub and began selling commercial real estate. In March 1987 he and Tharp came together for a one-time performance at a Virginia Beach nightclub. The successful concert and revival of beach music spurred them to reunite. They recorded an album, Sheiks of Shag, and performed by that name for a short time. For the next sixteen years they recorded new music and played at nightclubs, colleges, and summer festivals throughout the region. In November 1995 Bill Deal and the Rhondels were among the first groups inducted into the Carolina Beach Music Awards Hall of Fame, and the following year "I've Been Hurt" was included in the independent feature film Trees Lounge. Portsmouth's mayor declared 6 June 2003 Bill Deal Day at that year's Harborfest, and in September, at the second annual Legends of Music Awards, the band received a star on Norfolk's Legends of Music Walk of Fame.
Deal married Portsmouth native Janice Louise Burton in Perquimans County, North Carolina, in 1962. They had one son and one daughter. Their marriage ended in divorce, and in 1984 Deal married Barbara Jo Lerner. William Franklin "Bill" Deal died of a heart attack at his Virginia Beach home on 10 December 2003. His remains were cremated, and a memorial grave marker was erected at Chesapeake's Greenlawn Memorial Gardens. Among his many posthumous honors, Portsmouth city leaders declared February 2004 William F. "Bill" Deal Month, and the governor and the mayor of Virginia Beach recognized 19–23 May 2004 as Bill Deal Beach Music Weekend. On 4 August 2005 about one thousand people attended a ceremony in which part of Portsmouth's Harbor Street was renamed Bill Deal Street. The Original Rhondels, sometimes called Bill Deal's Rhondels, continued to perform after his death.
Sources Consulted:
Family information provided by son, William F. Deal Jr. (2007, 2008); feature articles with portraits in Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 8 June 1969, 3 June 1987, 14 Aug. 1988 (Portsmouth Currents supp.), 10 Jan. 1991 (Virginia Beach Beacon supp.), 28 Nov. 1996, 10 Oct. 1999 (Carolina Coast supp.); record chart information in Billboard, 1969–1970; obituaries in Newport News Daily Press and Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, both 11 Dec. 2003, Richmond Times-Dispatch, 12 Dec. 2003, and Roanoke Times, 13 Dec. 2003; tributes in Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 17 Dec. 2003, 1 Jan. (Virginia Beach Beacon supp.), 16 May 2004.
Image courtesy of John G. Deal (no relation).
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by John G. Deal.
How to cite this page:
John G. Deal,"William Franklin 'Bill' Deal (1944–2003)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2016 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Deal_William_Franklin_Bill, accessed [today's date]).
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