Buddy played with the Tulsa Philharmonic in 1978, and although I didn’t get to see the show, I found myself at Saied Music a few days later, looking at the very Slingerland kit he’d played, autographed heads and all. As I just happened to be looking for my first “real” kit to replace the small Ludwigs I’d been learning on, I broke the piggy bank and bought them!

About a year later, Buddy and his band played a small dinner theater in Tulsa called Ziegfields. This time I made sure I got tickets and my Dad and I got there early to get a table near the drums. During the first of two sets, Buddy commented about having twisted his ankle playing touch football at the hotel that afternoon, and asked the audience to cut him slack on the high hats; I assure you it wasn’t necessary…

During the intermission, my Dad slipped the maitre d’ a bill and asked if he could arrange for me to meet Buddy. He returned a little later and escorted me to Buddy’s dressing room! He knocked and opened the door, and there was Buddy Rich (!!!!) with an icebag on a very swollen left ankle. He was obviously in some pain, but he looked up and said “c’mon in kid, I hear you’ve got the kit I played last time I came through here.” Of course I was speechless, but he was extremely personable and set me at ease immediately. He actually BS’d with me for 5 or 10 minutes; I thought that was the coolest part – Buddy Rich just killing time between shows hanging out with some 14-year-old kid who couldn’t play his way out of a wet paper bag! When he finally kicked me out of his dressing room, he said he’d have a surprise for me during the second set.

When he came out for the second set, he grabbed an empty chair from our table and brought it up on stage behind the drums. As he motioned for me to come up, he said something to the audience along the line of “my young friend here didn’t get to see me play last year, so I said I’d try to make it up to him.” From there, the night swirled into sensory overload as I tried to understand what was going on right there in front of me. I remember just staring at his right foot in disbelief for minutes at a time. Every so often he’d look over his shoulder with a big grin and ask if I could see alright, or if that triple-ka-wham-a-diddle worked in that spot or did it feel forced? I think he might just have been having as much fun as I was, messing with me and showing off.

Everybody knows about the bus tapes of Buddy going off on the band, and maybe he rubbed some folks the wrong way, but to that teenage kid in 1979, he was nothing but COOL!!!

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it…
Steve Hoggard

That's a great story, Steve. You're right, we usually hear about the bus tapes type incidents, and it's good to hear about some of the nice things Buddy did for people. I'm sure countless people had experiences like yours but we just don't hear about them as much. Of course Buddy really fostered that sort of tough guy image so I think a lot of people expected that behavior from him. And that's what they got. But if you were polite and friendly with him that's what you got back. That was my experience with him a couple of times.
Rick