Bill 'Sauce Boss' Wharton to perform at the Titanic

BY ROBERT HAMILTON

What do Stephen King, Jimmy Buffet, The Food Network, Dan Ackroyd and Jonathan Demme have in common? What is the nexus of these disparate synchronicities? Has the cosmos gone completely bonkers?

Bill 'Sauce Boss' Wharton

Yes, it has. The connecting point of all of these is the "Sauce Boss," Bill Wharton.

Jimmy Buffet writes in his song I Will Play For Gumbo. "The Sauce Boss does his cooking on stage, stirring and a singing for his nightly wage, sweating and a fretting from his head to his toe, playing and swaying with the gumbo, praying and buffeting with the gumbo." The Food Network's Extreme Cuisine series is running a feature on the Sauce Boss; Dan Ackroyd featured All Round Man from Bill Wharton's Recipes compact disc.

Academy-award-winning director Jonathan Demme featured Wharton's anthem Let the Big Dog Eat in his film Something Wild. And what about Stephen King? Well one of the characters in the new film version of his Green Mile novel is Bill Wharton. Coincidence?

Bill "Sauce Boss" Wharton is no longer a best kept secret. After serving up his own fiercely original blues and gumbo together for over 10 years, the word is out. During his musical performances/cooking demonstrations, he and

his band, the Ingredients, have cooked and served up over 70,000 bowls of gumbo, all served at no cost. That's a lot of free food. No wonder everyone is talking about the Sauce Boss and visiting his popular, award-winning Web site <www.Sauceboss.com>.

Wharton's Recipes enhanced CD is the multimedia experience of a lifetime. It's Bill Wharton's new CD-ROM cookbook/Blues album, with a culinary travelogue and gumbo video, interfaced with the Sauce Boss Web site and all on a single disc. Shoppers on Amazon.com have held Recipes in the top of their Blues Emerging Artists charts since July 1999.

So why has the Sauce Boss embarked on this crazy gumbo crusade? What's the message in his madness? It's a totally inclusive message for the new millennium: "Let's share our music and have a meal together, and watch the social barriers melt away." It's world beat from way down South. This is the Sauce Boss.

The Sauce Boss will be performing at Titanic Microbrewery, 5813 Ponce de Leon Blvd., Coral Gables, on Saturday, Feb. 19, 10 p.m. Tickets at $5 can be obtained by calling 305-667-2537.

Ticket includes a bowl of the Sauce Boss' famous homemade gumbo.