Post-Disneyland
The team began working in night clubs in late 1959 in a small bar (The Sportsman) in Newport Beach with a hired pianist, Pete on bass and Bill on an abbreviated drum set. After adding a trumpet player and girl singer they moved on to the lounges of Las Vegas, playing at the Golden Nugget when it was strictly a western venue. They went on to tour the West Coast in various locations from San Diego to Bakersfield to Seattle.
By the middle of 1960 they were once again a duo, at a lounge in Newport Beach, The Villa Marina. After four-and-a-half months at the Villa, they opened at Harrah's lounge in Lake Tahoe, bouncing from there back to the Villa, to Reno, to Tahoe to Elko, Nevada and then, in August, 1961, to Melbourne, Australia. By this time Bill had married his first wife, Marilyn, and had a son, William Stacy Skiles.
During their stay Down Under they worked nightly at an upscale showroom called Mario's as the headline act and did two TV shows a week at station GTV 9. They were featured mostly on host Graham Kennedy's late-night show, In Melbourne Tonight, but also did the BP Super Show and a few others.
Disaster struck upon their return home that September when Pete was conscripted into the U.S. Army. Bill saw him off to Fort Ord and began two years surrounded by two musicians and a girl singer to replace Pete.
By the time Pete was released from the Service in 1963, Bill was divorced and remarried to his girl singer, Arlene Adams, and Pete was also married to his Army sweetheart, Brenda. They had a little girl, Paulette.
There followed a rather uncreative time on tour with Arlene doing vocals and another musician on bass and trombone with Pete on piano until Bill and Pete's old managers, Greif and Garris proposed to hire them to join The New Christy Minstrels, a well-known folk ensemble. They agreed as long as they didn't lose their identity as Skiles and Henderson and had their own portion of each concert to themselves. It was during this period that they discovered that they could be effective in front of large audiences and began to get some TV exposure on The Red Skelton Show, Bell Telephone Hour, The Today Show and others.
Upon their departure from the Christys, it was back to the lounges once again as a duo. Soon they found themselves back home ensconced in the lounge of a faux riverboat/restaurant/bar, The Rueben E. Lee in Newport Harbor. In the next few years their popularity soared in the Orange County area. From 1966 to 1968 they were a fixture on the showboat and during that time caught the attention of several important scouts. Their new manager, Ed Yelin got them a spot on The Dean Martin Show in 1967 which blossomed into eight appearances on the summer show Dean Martin's Goldiggers in 1968. In 1970 they did a 6-week tour of summer theaters in the East with Rowan and Martin and the then-unknown Lily Tomlin.
In their personal lives, Bill and Arlene had two new daughters, Shannon and Jennifer and Pete had remarried and had a son, Peter Jackson, AKA P.J., although that second marriage was unsuccessful after three years, ending in divorce.
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