Columnist Jerry Fink: Buffalo a product of blue-collar roots

Friday, Dec. 14, 2001 | 9:11 a.m.

Jerry Fink's lounge column appears on Fridays. Reach him at jerry @ lasvegassun.com or259-4058.

No one famous ever came from Richmond, Calif., except possibly for the world's greatest harmonica player, Norton Buffalo -- and me.

Actually, Norton grew up there and I escaped after a year and a half.

Richmond is a dreary, gray, blue-collar, bay-side town up the freeway from Oakland at the point where the San Francisco and San Pablo bays converge.

It was a tough town then, and probably still is.

"I had to fight my way through junior high and high school," 50-year-old Buffalo recalled. "I was the shortest kid in Kennedy High, which had a lot to do with my talent emerging. I was a little guy, and in order to be seen I had to become bigger than I was -- I became visible with my talent."

Buffalo was talking to me backstage, prior to a recent performance at the free, weekly Boulder Blues series at Boulder Station. It was the first time I had ever met the legendary musician, who plays almost every music genre with equal ease and passion.

I surprised him by mentioning some sites familiar to any old-timer from Richmond -- Moos Ice Cream Parlor (now gone), Nichols Park (all of the birds that once lived there have been eaten, allegedly by immigrants) and Cutting Boulevard.

Since leaving Richmond behind (Buffalo has lived in Sonoma, 40 miles north of Richmond, for the past 29 years) his career has soared. But he has good memories of his hometown, as well as the Bay Area in general.

"My mom was a nightclub singer in San Francisco in the '40s, and Dad played harmonica, but it was more of a hobby for him," Buffalo said. "He was a working guy, had a TV shop, who didn't think a musical career was a great idea. He taught me to play harmonica, but he thought I needed a real job. But as he saw my talent emerge, he accepted it."

Buffalo is a musical genius whose talent emerged early.

"I won my first talent contest in the sixth grade," he said. "I always loved music. I was in the high school symphonic band, jazz band, marching band, pep band, rock 'n' roll bands, soul bands. I won talent contests, performed in orchestras for plays -- I played all the time. I never wasn't playing. I was even a bugler in the Boy Scouts.

"I was involved in church and in youth groups of the church. I sang in the church choir, so I was singing at a young age."

When he wasn't performing somewhere he and his teenage-musician friends would sneak into jazz nightclubs.

"I was turned on to some great music," he said.

During his high school years, and after, he played in a rock 'n' roll band, but he listened mostly to jazz at night, until his musical horizons began to expand.

"I went through a reggae phase and a country phase. I was deep into country," Buffalo said.

He put together the country band Stampede in 1975, but soon after that he joined the Steve Miller Band ("Fly Like an Eagle") and has been associated with Miller ever since.

Miller recently decided to take a couple of years off, which gave Buffalo a chance to put a band together, Buffalo and the Knockouts, and to do some touring on his own.

Although Buffalo has performed on a hundred or more albums for almost every major music group in the country, he has only five CDs of his own.

That soon will change.

"I have almost 300 songs I've collected over the years that haven't been released yet," Buffalo said. "It's a great collection of material that I came across in the archives at my home, stuff I haven't heard in 25 years."

"There are five or six big-band tunes -- only singing, no harmonica. I've got some western swing stuff. Jazz. Blues. Rock 'n' roll -- there's an enormous wealth of stuff. I went through a lot of years without putting records out."

He was too busy touring with Miller, performing on other's CDs, raising kids and acting in movies ("Heavens Gate" and "The Rose") as well as scoring music in films ("Eddie Macon's Run").

Of the 300 songs, Buffalo is selecting a few for an R&B album for release sometime next year.

"It's way overdue for me to get a record out," he said, "but I keep getting distracted."

After the interview I listened to Buffalo's first set and then had to leave. I didn't learn until days later that I almost indirectly caused a premature end to his fabulous career.

He called me on the telephone and said at the end of the set he was running behind the stage to get one of his CDs to give to me before his second performance of the night. During the sprint he tripped in the dark over some cables, dislocating a wrist and hip, among other things.

"My neck was thrown out of whack," he said.

Like the trouper he is, Buffalo went on for the second set and no one was the wiser about the near-catastrophe. In fact, one observer said Buffalo was as good as he had ever been.

No one knew he was playing through the pain.

"After the show I was at a clinic till 4:30 in the morning," Buffalo said.

He was calling from Santa Monica, Calif., where he was going to play an acoustic guitar at a concert in spite of a sprained wrist that limited his movement.

"I have a high pain tolerance," Buffalo said.

I wish him the best of luck with the upcoming CD, or, as they say in show business, break a leg.

Lounging around

Ricky and the Redstreaks are as wild as ever. The classic rock 'n' roll group, which mixes bawdy comedy with its music, outgrew the Stardust ballroom and has moved into the hotel's pavilion. Judging from the size of the crowd last Friday, opening night of the National Final's Rodeo, the Redstreaks may one day have to find an even larger venue. There seemed to be more than 2,000 fans at the show, most of them relatively young adults. And the party is just beginning.

Also playing to a full house last Friday night (although it had nothing to do with the rodeo) was the legendary Sam Butera, the man who copiloted Louis Prima's flight into Las Vegas lounge history in the '50s and '60s. Butera & the Wildest were at the Castaways lounge. His legion of fans find him wherever he performs.

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