Bill Wharton, The Sauce Boss

FROM THE DEEP ROOTS OF THE FLORIDA CYPRESS SWAMP COMES THE SAUCE BOSS.  Haven’t heard him play?  You’ll never forget him once you do.  With his distinctive slide guitar sound, wrought out of his ’53 Telecaster like a man beggin’ for mercy, and slung through a 1948 Fender amp like a dark horse running through the night, the Sauce Boss has a truly authentic sound that leaves you looking for something you thought you’d lost, but in fact you never knew you had.   

WITH HIS HOMEGROWN STORYTELLING AND NATURAL-BORN GUITAR TALENT, THE SAUCE BOSS RIGHTEOUSLY SINGS THE BLUES.  He gives the feeling that can only come from a life lived in the eye of the storm.  He has weathered more than his share of hurricanes, sunburn, and mosquitoes – and he’s got the chops to prove it. He has taken his blues and a huge pot of gumbo to the disaster zones of the Mississippi delta and to homeless shelters across America – where he’s fed war veterans, hurricane survivors, and plenty of other regular folks who come for music but leave with much more.  The Sauce Boss offers up sustenance and redemption in the form of music, food, and above all, the love of the brotherhood of man. 

ONE MORNING IN THE EARLY 70'S, THE SAUCE BOSS WALKED OUT OF HIS HOUSE AND FOUND A 1933 VINTAGE NATIONAL STEEL GUITAR in his front yard. That lead him down the Blues path. Deep in the shed, he penned “Let the Big Dog Eat”, which was featured in Jonathan Demme’s film “Something Wild”. Years later he combined his blues with his hot sauce in a big pot of gumbo, made right on stage. Singing the recipe, he mixed his music and cooking together into a new medium.

SINCE 1990, THE SAUCE BOSS HAS COOKED GUMBO FOR OVER 165,000 PEOPLE, ALL FOR FREEwhile simultaneously playing his own swampy Florida blues. A Sauce Boss event transcends performance. It's a soul-shouting picnic of rock & roll brotherhood, involving everyone. And at the end of the show, everyone eats.

JIMMY BUFFETT SINGS ABOUT THE SAUCE BOSS in his "I Will Play for Gumbo" song. Parrotheads are now phlocking from all over the country and are also bringing the Sauce Boss to "play' and a' sway' with the gumbo" at their events. Festivals and performing arts centers throughout the US, Canada, and Europe are featuring the Sauce Boss and his gumbo. His songs "Let the Big Dog Eat" and "Great Big Fanny" appeared on the Jimmy Buffett compilation album "Margaritaville Café Late Night Menu". NPR's "All Things Considered" and "Morning Edition" have both covered the Sauce Boss. CNN and EXTRA sent film crews to New York City Sauce Boss extravaganzas in 2000, The Food Network's series "Extreme Cuisine" visited the Sauce Boss on location in New York, and another Food Network series "Keith Famie's Adventures" filmed a Sauce Boss show in Miami. The Sauce Boss is the only personality that’s been featured in “Living Blues”, “GQ”, AND "Gourmet Magazine".

The Sauce Boss now has taken his music and his gumbo to the streets with the non-profit 501c3 organization, PLANET GUMBO (planetgumbo.org), where the Sauce Boss and his band donate their performance (along with gumbo) to Homeless Shelters all over the US.

The Sauce Boss Website--SAUCEBOSS.COM--is high tech on a dirt road: down-home and state-of-the-art at the same time. Receiving over 1.2 million hits each year, SAUCEBOSS.COM offers fans the now-famous recipe for the famous gumbo, sound samples of Sauce Boss Bill Wharton's original songs, and they can subscribe to an RSS feed for the Sauce Boss Blog and the "SAUCEBOSS PODCAST", (which is also available through I-tunes).