William Charles "Buzzy" Linhart (March 3, 1943 – February 13, 2020) was an American rock performer, composer, multi-instrumentalist musician and actor.
Early life
Linhart was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He began playing percussion for symphony at the age of seven, switching to vibraphone at ten. At fourteen he entered the Cleveland Music School Settlement. Because of this training he led bands all through school and at the age of 18 entered the U.S. Navy School of Music as a percussionist.
Buzzy had a sister, Abby Linhart, and a brother, Gair Linhart.
Career
In 1963, he moved to New York City and became friends and roommates with John Sebastian. He also became a protégé of the senior guitarist and folk singer Fred Neil. One of his first bands, with fellow musicians Steve De Naut, Serge Katzen, and Max Ochs, was Seventh Sons, who released a raga-rock LP for ESP Records. Linhart later released a series of solo albums from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s starting with his Philips debut buzzy (the title with a small "b") in 1969. Although he entered military service to play in the Navy band, Linhart claimed that during his naval service he was unexpectedly called upon to help fight a fire with inadequate breathing apparatus, causing him chronic lung damage.[1] As a result, Buzz Linhart was decades ahead of his time in objecting to tobacco smoke in the clubs where he wanted to play. A frequent guest of radio host Vin Scelsa, he complained of feeling ill "singin' in the smoke." (source: The Closet, hosted by Vin Scelsa, WFMU 91.1FM, 1967 - 1969)
In 1971 Linhart was signed to Eleuthera Records.[2] Although closely associated with the Greenwich Village folk-rock scene for much of his career, he recorded that first complete solo album in London and Wales with the Welsh prog-rock band Eyes of Blue serving as the backing band.
Linhart had significant visibility as an actor in the mid-1970s. He also achieved some notoriety from his appearance in the opening sequence of the cult movieThe Groove Tube, as a hippie hitchhiker. He was also a regular on the 1976 television show Cos, starring Bill Cosby.[4] However, there appears to be little or no surviving footage from the series, unlike the several subsequent Cosby television series.
Illness and death
Linhart suffered a heart attack in May 2018. He died on February 13, 2020.[5][6][7]
