SAUCE BOSS

He cooks gumbo
He sings
He plays guitar
He writes the tunes
He makes the hot sauce
He leads the band
He feeds the masses
He's the SAUCE BOSS

ONE MORNING 94 THE EARLY "70's BILL WHARTON WALKED OUT OF HIS HOUSE AND FOUND A 1933 VINTAGE NATIONAL STEEL GUITAR in his front yard. Years later he combined his blues with his hot sauce in a big pot of gumbo, made right on stage. Singing the recipe, he twined his music and cooking together into a new medium. In the last twelve years, Wharton has fed over 90,000 people, a few at a time ... all for free, while playing his own swampy Florida blues. The Sauce Boss says "if we could forget our differences for a moment, sit down to the table, share some dinner, and treat each other like neighbors, maybe we could work some of this stuff out." A Sauce Boss event transcends performance. It's a soul-shouting picnic of rock & roll brotherhood ... involving everyone. "Praise the Lord and pass the grits!"

JIMMY BUFFETT SINGS ABOUT THE SAUCE BOSS in his "I Will Play for Gumbo" song. Parrotheads all over the country are bringing in the Sauce Boss for "playin' and a' swayin, with the gumbo" at their events. Bill Wharton's "Let the Big Dog Eat" and "Great Big Fanny" appeared on the Jimmy Buffett compilation alburn "Margaritaville Café Late Night Menu". And "Let the Big Dog Eat" was also In Jonathan Demme's film "Something Wild". Camera crews from CNN and EXTRA have sent film crews to Sauce Boss extravaganzas, The Food Network's series "Extreme Cuisine" visited the Sauce Boss on location in New York, and NPR's "All Things Considered" and "Morning Edition" hove featured Bill Wharton.

(CNN) -- Do you like a little gumbo with your guitar? For Bluesman Bill Wharton, cooking is more than an adjective to describe his music.

"It's kind of a DNA meld between B. B. King and Julia Child," says Wharton of his unique concerts. 'We make gumbo, we feed everybody and we play some scorchin' blues."

Nicknamed the "Sauce Boss," Wharton travels around with his band, "The Ingredients, stirring up a hot pot of gumbo while they perform smoky numbers with lots of throat-scratching, gravelly vocals.

The show began in the 1980s after Wharton developed a liking for a certain condiment.

"Well, I invented this hot sauce, Liquid Summer Hot Sauce, and I was doing all kinds of carrying it around to gigs everywhere, and it just kind of grew into a cooking show," he explains.

Throw in a little okra, some hot sauce and a roux and you have the beginnings of a mean gumbo. Wharton belts out a hot tune while the concoction simmers.

Nearly 75,000 bowls later, the boss of sauce is satisfying the music-starved everywhere.