Bill's career started in 1938 when he taught himself to play the lap steel guitar and by 1941 was a featured performer in a local radio show. He switched to six string guitar in 1942 and performed throughout his home state of Michigan until 1946 when he entered the Coast Guard. Until that time he was not sure whether he wanted to become a commercial artist or musician. One of his dreams was to become a cartoonist, and he came very close to making that his career. After his discharge from the Coast Guard he made his choice, and in 1948 he became the third guitarist to enter what was then Berklee School of Music. He graduated in 1951 and for the next eleven years pursued a very successful career as a writer/arranger and guitarist. As a songwriter he had hundreds of tunes published with a few making it into the Top 40. He was as comfortable writing for full orchestra as small ensembles, and his services were sought by local and national performers. As a guitarist his resume reads like a virtual who's who of the times. He wrote for and/or accompanied performers such as Ella Fitzgerald, Andy Williams, Count Basie, Victor Borge, Guy Lombardo, Marliea Deidrich and too many others to mention. As a studio guitarist in Boston and New York City his strong acoustic rhythm guitar sound was heard on excess of two hundred albums. In addition to receiving accolades as a performer and arranger he was honored in the mid-seventies by ASCAP for his wide-ranging and prolific writing career.

In 1965 he was offered the position as Chair of the Guitar Department following in the footsteps of Jack Petersen. He felt he was too busy with his career to take a job of that magnitude, but agreed to do it temporarily for his good friend, then administrator of the Berklee School, Bob Share. He fell in love with teaching and found that his expertise as a professional writer/performer was just what Berklee needed at that time.

In the early 1970's he was in a pit band in one of the major dinner theaters in Boston when the contractor told him he should give up his beautiful 1940's Epiphone Emperor archtop and buy a solid body guitar to keep up with the times. He never did give up that wonderful guitar and played it until the day he died. It was during that period that he did stop activily performing and for the next twenty-five years devoted his efforts developing the Guitar Department at Berklee. During that time he published ten texts of Guitar pedagogy plus scores of exercises, solo pieces, and arrangements.

To know Bill was to truly love him. He was a combination of older brother and father figure to everyone he came in contact with. The words "I do not have time" did not enter into his vocabulary. A half hour lesson would often turn into a two hour social visit and therapy session. For this reason among others you would often find him in his office at 7:30 AM as well as 7:30 PM.

I had known Bill Leavitt since 1969 and in that time he became my teacher, my superior, and my dear friend. I have never met a man who was more loved than Bill and doubt if I ever will.