What can you tell me (us) about Pete Barbutti? We saw him several times in different lounges and on the "Tonight" show. The last time we saw him, he was at the Plaza. He's a riot. I especially like his "Cordeen School" routine and "4th Trumpet" routine. He could make the Mona Lisa laugh.
We love Pete Barbutti too. Last time we saw him, he was doing his shtick, appearing at a PR event at Circus Circus Reno, when they opened a new restaurant and had a private party there for VIPs (and us). He told (long, clean) jokes, did some hilarious comedy on the piano, went through his entire routine of sound effects on the accordion (a train and whistle, Chevvy station wagon, Niagara Falls, mosquitos, thunder, etc.) and killed, just killed, the room.
This question came in on the day we ran our little bio of Cook E. Jarr. Pete is a lot more widely known than Cookie, having made dozens of TV appearances between the late 1960s and the early 1990s, including 15 or so on “The Tonight Show” during the Johnny Carson era, and shows hosted by Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, Steve Allen, and every other talk-show host you ever heard of, plus their replacements.
Barbutti, a native of Scranton, Penn., will be 84 this May. He does standup comedy, though it’s often sitting at a piano keyboard in the tradition of Victor Borge. He also plays the accordion, the “Cordeen School” mentioned in the question, in which Barbutti plays a hapless accordion teacher.
He grew up on the accordion, taking lessons from the time he was about six years old. He turned down a music scholarship to Penn State, opting instead to start a jazz band called the Millionaires. But they needed a hook, so they started to do a little comedy. That segued into his whole routine: comedy, piano, jazz, accordion, and trumpet. He was hip, full of inside jokes and stories, clever, and fast. His comedy was clean (no vulgarity or smut) and original, and he was so prolific that every time you saw him, it was mostly new material.
An extremely accomplished musician, Barbutti couldn’t help going off on all kinds of musical tangents, seguing from jazz to Bach to the Mexican hat dance. It was said, “You had no idea where he was going next, and neither did he, or at least he convinced you he didn’t." Musicians he played with (mostly) got a kick out of trying to keep up with him.
In 1960, Barbutti and company appeared in the Cloud Nine Lounge at the Frontier in Las Vegas, his first appearance here. They were booked for three weeks, but it developed into a six-month gig with Billy Eckstine, Della Reese, and the Treniers.
From there, Barbutti and a new band worked the lounge at the Thunderbird for a few months, till he got gigs knocking around Spokane and Seattle. In Spokane, he wrote, produced, and directed his own TV special; the tape found its way to Hollywood and the next thing Pete knew, he was a regular on the “Steve Allen Show.”
He toured with Nat King Cole, played Tahoe with Esquivel, appeared on the “Regis Philbin Show” (who took over for Steve Allen), and eventually settled in at the Saharas (Vegas, Reno, and Tahoe), where the legendary Stan Irwin was the entertainment director.
He hung out with Buddy Hackett and Shecky Greene (and has lots of stories about both wild men), has nothing good to say about Wayne Newton and Don Adams (star of “Get Smart,” on which Barbutti did a cameo), tells stories about Allan Sherman, George Carlin, Jackie Gleason, Bill Dana, Don Rickles, Pat Boone, Kenny Rogers, and lots of Vegas musicians, and, we're certain, still has a non-stop mouth and a fantastic memory, especially for details.
You can see a few YouTube and lots of Bing videos of him, just by searching.
Like we lost track of Cook E. and were brought up to date by friends and fans, if anyone knows where Pete Barbutti is and what he’s doing these days, we’d love to hear about him.
"Like we lost track of Cook E. and were brought up to date by friends and fans, if anyone knows where Pete Barbutti is and what he’s doing these days, we’d love to hear about him" That's a little disingenuous. When that original Cook E. Jar QoD appeared reporting erroneously that Cook E. was retired, I Googled Cook E.. On the first page of Google results, there was a Facebook fan page and other sites with the current information for where and when Cook E. was appearing.