Terry Buckalew
LightNews LightNews
banner
terrybuckalew.bsky.social
Terry Buckalew
@terrybuckalew.bsky.social
3.4K followers 790 following 4.5K posts
History, music, blues, some Arkansas content.
Posts Replies Media Videos
terrybuckalew.bsky.social
Wow!
December 1, 2025 at 1:02 AM
terrybuckalew.bsky.social
www.legacy.com/us/obituarie...
Donald Hays Obituary (2025)
View Donald "Skip" Hays's obituary, send flowers and sign the guestbook.
www.legacy.com
November 30, 2025 at 2:23 PM
terrybuckalew.bsky.social
Ha! Yes.
I was the “young assistant” (excerpt from Elvis Costello’s book).
Me & EC shine Sonny Payne, the wo who had been broadcasting on KFFA since 1951. These days, he worked out of a radio booth at the Delta Heritage Center on Cherry Street. I'd stopped in there in 2004 to see the beautiful hand-painted bass-drum head that Peck Curtis had played with Sonny Boy on "King Biscuit Time." The kit had later been owned and donated to the exhibit by another son of Arkansas, Levon Helm. On that occasion, Sonny Payne's young assistant had pulled me into the booth along with two local musicians who were publicizing their clubs shows. I'm not sure Sonny knew who I was, but his young associate told him that my wife had some records out. Sonny said, "Well, you send "em down to the station, boy, and I'll give them a spin." The next day, I sent him Diana's entire catalog, and when Matt and I returned five vears later, Sonny named all the tracks that had got good responses on the air from as far away as Greenville, Mississippi. You don't broadcast for over fifty vears without knowing both your
November 29, 2025 at 10:50 PM
terrybuckalew.bsky.social
1. Sonny & Bobby Rush in 2005
Photo by me
2.Sonny w/Jeff Stone, me, Mac Arnold, Zac Harmon, 2006
3. Dave Riley, Sonny, CW Gatlin, Donna Herula, Steve Cheseborough, me. 2011
She by & Bobby Rush Sonny and Jeff stone, me, Mac, Zac 3. Dave Riley, Sonny, CW Gatlin, Donna Herula, Steve Cheseborough, me. 2011
November 29, 2025 at 3:35 PM
terrybuckalew.bsky.social
Sonny quoted in Palmer’s “Deep Blues” about the death of bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson.
And his own funeral program from 2018.
Charlie Musselwhite’s instrumental “Sonny Payne Special”

youtu.be/i5YOUd8N8vo?...
by mimicking the airs and accent of an English gentleman. After his 1964 European tour, Sonny Boy surprised most of his old friends by returning to Helena, where he once again took over King Biscuit Time. KFFA had moved out of the Floyd Truck Lines building and into a modern, carpeted studio on the top (fifth) floor of the tallest building in town. During broadcasts thick drapes were drawn across the windows, but before and after the live shows, one could open them and look out at the levee, the old Illinois Central tracks, the big, leafy elm and sycamore trees along the edge of the river, and the ferry landing almost directly below. Announcer Sonny Payne wondered why the irascible old harp man had come back after all these years, bowler hat, attaché case, two-tone suits, and all. "Sonny Boy," he said one day after a broadcast, "I thought you were having a ball over there in Eu-rope." "Yes, sir, I was." "Why'd you come back?" "I just come home to die. I know I'm sick." DEEP BLUES • 262 "How do you know you're going to die?" Sonny Boy looked Payne right in the eye. "We're just like ele- phants," he said. "We knows." At least that's the way Sonny Payne tells it. The story sounds heavily romanticized, but apparently it isn't. Houston Stackhouse says Sonny Boy told him, "Well, Stack, I done come home to die now." Stackhouse was unconvinced: "I thought he's just talkin'. I carried him to Greenwood, two or three times. We had some plays down there, and I'd go down there with him, and we'd play. So he had me to carry him all around where he used to be, all up and down them roads and things. One day comin' back... I knowed it was somethin' funny about him then.... He just wanted to see every place that he had used to be down there. Sometimes we'd be Sonny’s funeral program
November 29, 2025 at 2:45 PM