Easter Theatre

Described in the Tampa Bay Times as a ‘recording artist, country music showman, flea market huckster, roller-rink operator and newspaper publisher’, today’s post seems timely, both because of the season and because of the performer’s heritage.

 

Born Boris Max Pastuch to Ukrainian parents in Largo, Florida but raised in New Jersey, Buddy Max, the name behind today’s 45 release, ‘learned country and bluegrass from Ukrainian records’ played by his father, before ‘I bought a guitar and a book for 35 cents, called Sing Like Your Favorite Cowboy Stars.’

 

He began his recording career in New York in 1949. Over the next couple of years he appeared on stage with various country greats, including ‘singing cowboy’ Gene Autry, and then moved to Hollywood in the hope of becoming a star. It was there that young Boris Pastuch became Buddy Max, but by 1955 he found himself back in Florida, where – apart from summer trips back to the east coast - he spent the rest of his life.

 

He made his second recording, in Tampa, Florida, in 1955 and landed a job performing live on a local radio station. Around that same time he met Freda, an accordion player who, in 1957, would become his wife: the couple would stay together for the rest of Freda’s life. The pair, who had a son, John, became goat farmers, setting up home in Lecanto in Florida’s Citrus County. They ran a highly successful flea market twice a week from the farm, the same market that gave Buddy, who sadly died in 2008, the nickname ‘America’s Singing Flea Market Cowboy. he built his own roller skate rink on the farm and, when another (better equipped) rink opened up nearby, he built an amphitheatre on his land where he and Freda (and, on occasion, son John) would act out religious plays.

 

Buddy liked a conspiracy (the Government was run by the Mafia, and they wanted to take his land from him), and he was also open to being scammed. He spent a fortune on having his music published by song-sharks, and proudly boasted of having won a gold award from the International Biographical Centre, an organisation that creates ‘awards’ and offers them to anyone gullible enough to cough up the readies, hundreds of dollars for a Commemorative Medal or a laminated certificate... and Buddy had both.

 

During his career, Buddy issued ten albums in various formats and a whole bunch of singles on his own Cowboy Junction label, most of which he sold - or gave away - at the flea market. The only other artist I have found that signed to Cowboy Junction was Buddy Pastuck, ‘the Roller Skating Cowboy’, which appears to have been nothing more than an alias for our own Buddy Max.

 

Here’s Buddy, with both sides of his 1986 Easter-themed release, Easter Bunny – Buddy Max, and the rather fabulous Easter Day.

 

Enjoy!

 

Download Bunny HERE

Download Day HERE