Born in Pittsburgh, keyboard/vocalist Bill Heid has performed throughout the U.S., Canada, South America, Europe, and the Far East, including a three year stay in Japan. From 1965 through the mid-70’s, he worked the Hammond B-3 organ “chitlin clubs” with his own groups and with jazz greats such as Sonny Stitt, David “Fathead” Newman, Grachan Monchur, Mickey Roker, Joe Dukes, Roger Humphries, Rodney Whitaker, Robert Hurst, Grant Green, Jimmy Ponder, Bruce Foreman, and Henry Johnson, appearing on two Johnson albums for MCA/Impulse. From 1975 to 1984, based in Chicago, Bill toured with blues greats Jimmy Witherspoon, John Lee Hooker, Son Seals, and Fenton Robinson, playing on two albums with Robinson, two with KoKo Taylor, and another with Roy Buchanan for Alligator Records. From 1963 through 1996, Heid pursued another “career” of sorts. He hitchhiked in the 48 continental states, Canada, Mexico, Switzerland, France, Italy, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and to the Thailand/Cambodia border, earning a place in the Guinness Book Of World Records. Accurately documenting exactly 400,000 miles, he told of some of his adventures on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 1985.