For decades, it was the summer soundtrack to Coligny Plaza. Reverberating across storefronts, shops, and restaurants, it was the sweet sound of the endless madcap energy of childhood. To some, this trilling hum would hit the ear like a power drill, causing an involuntary wince and an utterance of “What is that godawful noise?” To others, it was the buzzing symphony of youthful exuberance, a joyfully atonal noise unhampered by the traditional octave.
To Rick Hubbard, this crescendo of kazoos was the sound of magic and memories. “It’s a beautiful thing,” he said. “There’s nothing like it.”
Hubbard’s famed Kazoobie Kazoo Show was, in its heyday, one of the three pillars of children’s entertainment on Hilton Head Island. There was Gregg Russell in Harbour Town. There was Shannon Tanner in Shelter Cove. And in Coligny, there was Rick Hubbard and his cacophony of kazoos.
While he still does at least one show each summer on Hilton Head Island, it’s been years since his Kazoobie shows were a staple of Coligny’s summer. But as his regular appearances around the country – not to mention his fleeting fame in a nationwide spot for Facebook – will attest, Hubbard is still very much one of the Lowcountry’s greatest family entertainers.
Rick Hubbard leads visiting children in a rousing version of air guitar onstage under the Liberty Oak in Harbour Town.
“I’ve been all over playing summer reading programs, libraries, theaters. … I play at five different resorts. That has made me a little less visible on Hilton Head, so I’ve always tried to keep at least one gig on the island,” he said. “I’ve always been that kind of entertainer who appreciates challenges rather than comfort and new energy versus the same old thing. So it just fit my personality to not just settle in and commit to a five-nights-a-week gig for the rest of my life.”
When he performed his first Coligny gig in 1987, he had already established himself as an in-demand musician not only on the island, but in his native Atlanta. After being given his first guitar in the 1960s (“I refused to play clarinet in the band, so my grandmother gave me a guitar and said, ‘If you’re not going to play in the band, you still have to have music in your life’”), he got his first taste of success in college when his band was hired to back up the legendary Chuck Berry.
“Chuck Berry never carried a band, never traveled with a band, never had a band. He was all about the money. He’d fly into town and say, ‘Give me a guitar player, a bass player, a drummer and a keyboard player,’” Hubbard said. “It was just magic. It was like I’d been in Chuck Berry’s band my whole life. There are probably 10,000 bass players who played with Chuck Berry. I am not that special, but for me, it was a big deal.”
Coming up through the Atlanta music scene, he found himself in a band called Cullowhee. Their folk rock sound was popular on what Hubbard calls the “Hootie and the Blowfish circuit,” taking them to venues like the Double Door in Charlotte, J.C. Dobbs in Philadelphia, 930 Club in Washington, D.C., and the 40 Watt Club in Athens. Eventually, through a series of connections, they booked a gig at a little place on Hilton Head Island called The Old Post Office. Returning again with an entirely different band, he had a conversation with Mark Ruplinger, part owner of the legendary venue, that would change his life.
“I told him, I’m just trying to stay busy playing music and I’ll tell you, I love it down here in Hilton Head.’ I’d been out to a few places where guys were playing guitar and singing songs and told Mark if he heard about any opportunities, I wasn’t married to this band,” Hubbard said. “A few months later, at nine o’clock in the morning, my phone rang. It was Mark, asking if I was still looking for a guitar playing gig on Hilton Head. And as it turned out I was, because my band had just broken up.”
It was kismet. His first test-run gig came Easter weekend 1987, where he was asked to put on a two-hour show at Coligny. Inspired by what Gregg Russell was doing in Harbour Town, Hubbard augmented his show with storytelling, puppetry, juggling flaming torches, and music to create a three-ring circus of entertainment. But he knew his show was missing something: He wanted a grand finale.
And that’s when kismet struck again.
“I was out on tour doing standup comedy, of all things, in Louisville, Kentucky, and I walked in a music store. They had a big, whole display case full of kazoos with all different imprints and stuff on them. It turned out that store had a direct connection to America’s only kazoo factory,” he said. “It was like ‘ding ding ding.’ I’ll hand out kazoos at the end of the show.”
More so than the bass he played for Chuck Berry, the keyboards he played with his traveling bands, or the guitar he played at Coligny, the kazoo would become Hubbard’s signature instrument. The popularity of his Kazoobie Kazoo show would quickly eclipse its Coligny birthplace, becoming a phenomenon at festivals across the country, with Hubbard leading kazoo orchestras from the Ohio State Fair to the Kennedy Center.
A variety of kazoos on display at the Kazoo Factory & Museum
“Kids entertainment was huge in the ’90s. I rode this tsunami wave of playing giant theaters and huge festivals with enormous crowds,” he said. “I put on a 30,000-person kazoo band in Cincinnati during Oktoberfest in 1999.”
He even wound up purchasing that sole American kazoo factory, moving its operations to Beaufort and setting himself up as the preeminent kazoo artist in the country. His success would see him appear in a national Facebook ad as part of the International Kazoo Players Association. He has since sold the factory, saying with a grin, “If you ever own a kazoo factory and you get an offer, you don’t really want to sit around and see if you get more offers,” but he maintains a Colonel Sanders-type role as figurehead.
The Kazoo Factory & Museum in Beaufort
As his career in kazoo manufacturing winds down, he has established Rick Hubbard’s Great American Kids Show and built a booking agency with two partners, one of whom was once just a nine-year-old kid with a kazoo at a show. His profile might be slightly lower on Hilton Head these days, with the occasional summer show in Harbour Town, but rest assured Rick Hubbard has kept his musical journey humming along.
“Frank Sinatra had a great quote: ‘There’s entertainers and there’s artists.’ I tell people, I’m not an artist, I’m an entertainer,” he said. “I found something that works, which is making people happy, playing songs, getting kids involved, and handing out kazoos. And I’ve stuck with that concept.”
Part of Rick’s interactive show includes an onstage bubble party.
