One morning in the early '70s, Wharton walked out of his house and found a 1933 vintage National Steel guitar in his front yard. This guitar led him down the blues path. Deep in the woodshed, he penned "Let the Big Dog Eat," a song that was featured in Academy Award winning director Jonathan Demme's "Something Wild."

With a brand new release "Sky Blues", a 2001 release "Gumbo Man" and 1999 "Recipes" Multimedia Enhanced CD on his own Independent label, Burning Disk Records , and four records out on the Kingsnake Records Blues label in the US and one on Virgin/Loft in France, frequent tours of both America and France, national radio appearances (NPR's "Bluestage" and "Morning Edition" and Dan Ackroyd's "House of Blues Radio Show"), national TV features on CNN, Extra, and on Food Network's "Extreme Cuisine", Bill Wharton is no longer a best kept secret. The New York Times called Wharton's musical cooking video "The Sauce Boss" "...an engaging and amusing mixture." "Le Monde de la Musique" (the premier French music magazine) gave Wharton's first record ("Sauce Boss") four stars. He has been featured on many compilation albums (most notably with Jimmy Buffett and Diana Bogart on "Margaritaville Cafe Late Night Menu"). Jimmy Buffett even sings about the Sauce Boss in "I Will Play for Gumbo" on his "Beach House on the Moon" CD. The tunes "All Round Man" from the "Recipes" CD and "She's on Fire," from Wharton's CD "South of the Blues," were both "Breakers of the week" on Dan Ackroyd's House of Blues Radio show.

When the Sauce Boss decided to put cooking and music in the same show, the whole thing took off. Some have called it shtick or a gimmick, but Wharton says "it's two things that I've always loved to do--play music and cook dinner!" Paris correspondent for International Herald Tribune, Mike Zwerin, says "he does both equally well." National Book award winner Bob Shacochis featured Bill Wharton in his "GQ" column "Dining In," which later appeared in Shacochis's book "Domesticity." Wharton has played festivals and clubs in the US, France, Ireland and Canada, cooking all along the way. He's made gumbo in New Orleans and Lafayette, Louisiana, and that's a tall order. In his first trip to France, he cooked and played to a sold out concert in the prestigious Printemps de Bourges festival, where he had the assistance of not only his band, The Ingredients, but also a master chef and ten apprentices. He cooked for two solid weeks at Le Meridien (a four-star hotel in Paris). Wharton has appeared in national TV and radio shows in Paris, and has toured throughout the country. Playing the French "National Festival de Blues" for two consecutive years, he was selected as honorary President of the festival in 1995.

Spreading the gospel according to gumbo, Wharton is constantly touring, makes and sells two killer hot sauces though his Wharton Pepper Company: "Liquid Summer Datil Pepper Hot Sauce" and Liquid Summer Habanero," and his SAUCEBOSS.COM is a very popular, award-winning website. As the Sauce Boss says, "we're concerned with the two basic food groups here--Blues and Food. Come and share it with us!"