For many years the host of Saturday Midday Jazz on KCSM-FM, Sonny Buxton’s was a fascinating and unusual career. He played football for the early Oakland Raiders; worked in radio and television news, did concert promotion; and ran a pair of landmark San Francisco clubs– Jazz at Pearl’s and Milestones.
Sonny was introduced to broadcasting while an intern at a small station in Los Angeles. He later did a stint as a late-night disc jockey, hosting the “House of Bamboo” for Armed Forces Radio while stationed in Japan with the Air Force.
An accomplished drummer in his own right, Sonny met and worked with some of the greatest entertainers in history, from Duke Ellington to Sarah Vaughn, Eartha Kitt, Ray Charles, and Smokey Robinson. Many consider Buxton to be one of the last of a fading breed of pioneers. He has served as an ambassador for the music that’s been a part of his life for eight decades.
All of this, despite something that would seem to be a roadblock to a career in broadcasting: Sonny Buxton is a stutterer. As reported by San Francisco Senior Beat, Buxton said, “I was a stutterer; I’m still a stutterer. People would tell me you are crazy to think of going into broadcasting.” That didn’t stop him. Much like the protagonist of the movie the “King’s Speech,” he worked with a speech pathologist, doing exercises with a metronome, and filling his mouth with pebbles and declaiming over the roar of the ocean. “The king had it worse than me,” Buxton joked.