The Sauce Boss – Bill Wharton

www.sauceboss.com | www.PlanetGumbo.org

“The sauce boss does his cookin’ on the stage, 
Stirrin’ and a singing for his nightly wage.
Sweating and frettin’ from his head to his toe,
Playin’ and swayin’ with the gumbo,
Prayin’ and buffetin’ with the gumbo.” – I Will Play For Gumbo, Jimmy Buffett

What does it take to earn a mention in a Jimmy Buffett song? The Gulf Coast Dalai Lama doesn’t include just anyone in his lyrics. If he does, you must be doing something really good, or really bad. Bill Wharton, the Sauce Boss of “I Will Play For Gumbo” fame, is definitely doing the former.

Let’s be clear about what Bill does. He plays a mean blues guitar. That’s enough for most people. But Bill also makes a great hot sauce. Multi-talented. But wait, there’s more! Bill also cooks up a spectacular bowl of gumbo. And did I mention he plays and cooks, onstage, at the same time? Now that’s something you don’t see every day.

And just to make sure he stands out from any other blues musicians who cook gumbo onstage during their set, he also serves the gumbo to his audience after the show. For free. And he sits down and eats with them. Yep, he’s definitely set himself apart.

But wait, there’s still more! On his off days, Bill and the band head to the nearest homeless shelter and play (and cook) for free. Has this man no shame? Doesn’t he know how selfish he’s making the rest of us feel?

So what makes this guy tick? Why the cooking onstage? And why giving away gumbo? Bill offers by way of explanation, and as a declaration of his overriding philosophy, “We’re all a gumbo. A gumbo is more than just a dish. A gumbo is a piece of culture. The French brought the roux. The Native Americans brought the sassafras, which we call file powder. The Africans brought the okra. They put more than the ingredients in it. They put their lives in it.

“My message is we all look different, but deep down we’re all the same. If we can get together on a Friday or Saturday night and have a good time with each other and sit down and have dinner together and forget about our differences for a minute, and concentrate on what we have in common, then maybe we can work some of this stuff out.”

And work it out he has. By his count, he’s served 175,000 bowls of forget our differences gumbo. And he’s still going.

Music really starts at about 1:55 … great!

Born in Orlando before Disney took over, Bill is a self taught musician. He’s also a self taught cook. He watched his Mom in the kitchen, and had a job at a burger joint. But, he says, “I never had a gig actually cooking. This hot sauce just got me headlong into becoming a foodie and a chef.”

What about this hot sauce? How did it and the title “Sauce Boss” get started? Well first, “Sauce Boss” is a nickname given to him by friends after he created his own hot sauce. “ I wasn’t satisfied with the stuff that was out there. This was before the glut of all the sauces we have on the shelves now. There was just basically Tabasco and some Louisiana sauces and some Caribbean stuff. I just needed a better hot sauce. And I was trying to combine a couple of recipes. One was a kind of Caribbean salsa and the other was a New Orleans style sauce, and I got something that’s in between.

“People would come over to my house and eat it all up. I’d make two gallons and it’d be gone in a couple of weeks. That’s a lot of hot sauce! So I decided I was going to put a label on the bottle and sell it to my friends. I started carrying it around with me to the gigs, cause that’s where I saw people, and then they started calling me the Sauce Boss.

“And then I started cooking. It was New Year’s Eve of 1989, and I decided to showcase the sauce in a pot of gumbo. And 175,000 bowls later, here we are!”

Since that New Year’s Eve debut, Bill had refined the show. And how exactly does one cook and play blues at the same time? It starts with a rousing tune, then the band stays on the back burner while he gives a demonstration on how to cook gumbo. Then he’ll do a song for the chicken, then a song for the okra, and so on, weaving the music and the recipe together. “It becomes one thing,” Bill says. “At the end of the show, we say the blessing and eat some gumbo with everybody.”

Bill’s music is a blend all its own, just like the gumbo. It’s described as a spicy Florida slide guitar blues. “Florida’s kinda halfway between New Orleans and the Caribbean,” Bill explains, “and that’s kind of where I’m at with my hot sauce, and also with my music. It’s kind of bluesy, and has that New Orleans swagger, but it’s also got a lot of rhythm to it. Hanging out in Miami gives you a taste of that Latin-American music.”

A blues guitarist has to have some special guitars. Bill’s got ‘em. The guitar he uses on stage is a 1953 Double cut away custom Telecaster, which he calls a rare bird. Then there’s the guitar he uses only in studio, a 1933 National steel guitar. Where did he find it? “It was in my front yard one morning when I woke up.” Kind of like manna from heaven; free food for the musical soul.

That guitar was as free as a bowl of Bill’s gumbo. “We’ve never charged a penny for our gumbo. That’s another part of my message. Sharing. And whenever we have a day off, we take the show to a homeless shelter. We’ve played all over the country. You know where the largest homeless shelter in the country is? Washington, D.C., three blocks off the mall.” Bill has a non-profit organization, the Planet Gumbo Foundation, to help gather support for his homeless shows. PlanetGumbo.org is the website for the foundation.

Bill has a separate website, www.sauceboss.com, for his music and hot sauce. There, you can order one of his 11 albums. His latest is Hot n’ Heavy, a 2010 release full of gumbo inspired tunes and the instant classic, “Get Naked and Surf”. The band members are from Pensacola: Johnny Paradise – guitar, Jassen Wilbur – bass, and Justin Headley – drums.

You can also pick up some of his hot sauce at the website. Has three sauces now. The original, Liquid Summer, uses the relatively rare datil pepper (he buys them from growers in St. Augustine and Tallahassee) for a unique flavor. He’s added Liquid Summer Habanero which is a little hotter due to the habaneros. And he has Hot N Heavy Peach sauce.

But you can’t buy his gumbo. It’s only available at the shows. The source of his gumbo recipe is Shirley Neal, from Baton Rouge. “I knew her son and her husband. Her son is Kenney Neal who is a blues player. His father, Raful, is big in the Louisiana swamp blues scene. Shirley’s been cooking gumbo forever. We were in the studio at the same time once and she was in the kitchen cooking the whole time and I watched her like a hawk.”

Bill has refined his gumbo over the years, and occasionally adds different ingredients. But the core stays the same. “My hot sauce is a major part of my gumbo. The datil pepper is amazing. It’s not just hot, it has a lot of flavor in it. It bridges the taste gap between the chicken and seafood and the vegetables, making it one thing.

“That’s the thing about gumbo. It’s a lot of different things that come together to make something that’s good. Like people. It happens every time we play music. People come from all over the place, all different backgrounds, all kinds of religions, all kinds of races, all kinds of people. And there’s not a problem. Because we give each other respect, and sit down and eat with each other and treat each other as neighbors.”

Ever run out of gumbo? “It’s really weird the way it seems to work out. When I first started out, I made it in this little tiny pot and it was amazing how far the gumbo would go. I mean, I fed a lot of people. It got to where it was kind of scary-creepy. It was like fishes and loaves. Somehow it worked out.”

And things continue to work out for the Sauce Boss, as he crosses the country promoting a confluence of music and food. “We’re just a multi-sensory, soul-shouting picnic of rock and roll brotherhood,” said Bill. So that’s all it takes to get mentioned in a Buffett tune!

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