David Buskin was born and grew up in the Bronx. His first brushes with music were piano lessons from ages 4-14 and playing radio hits by ear. In high school he got a job playing in a rock and roll band. Their repertoire was fifties’ rock – Chuck Berry, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Ray Charles. “The band was a lot of fun, but it kept me from learning to dance for years,” he says. During the late fifties, he got converted to jazz, and he was fortunate to have an older friend who was a big jazz fan take him to clubs he could not have gotten into alone – The Village Vanguard, The Five Spot, The Half Note, Café Bohemia, The Village Gate…. He was able to see many of the gods of the music up close – Monk, Mingus, Mulligan, Basie, Ellington, Gillespie, Kenton, Getz, Garner… even Billie Holiday in one of her last appearances. As a senior (Horace Mann) he got a guitar and discovered folk music, turtlenecks and “beatnik chicks;” he used to “make the scene” on Sundays at Washington Square with about three hundred other strummers. He also started writing songs. He sent his first one to Lieber and Stoller, who wrote back that they loved both song and singer. He concluded, “This stuff is easy.” A conclusion he later had occasion to revisit. In college (Brown) he, like everyone else, was blown away by the Beatles; he returned to playing rock, this time as the bassist in a quartet. Upon graduating with a degree in American Lit, he went to Boston to study jazz at Berklee. But the army said it was not continuous schooling, and he got drafted. Once inside, he found his way into Special Services and ended up as the musical director of The Third Army Soldier Show in Atlanta. (He would much later write a musical with Jake Holmes about his army experiences called “Victory Train.” The show had several successful staged readings, but just as doors started to open for it, the Covid pandemic hit, doors closed and wind left sails.) Upon his release from the service, he quickly embarked on a solo singer/songwriter career. He got signed by Epic and made two albums for them: “David Buskin” and “He Used to Treat Her.” Critical reception: A, sales: F. He got dropped. The mid-seventies was kind of a lost interlude for him – playing piano or guitar and writing and singing back-up for other artists like Mary Travers and Tom Rush; fronting his own band, and fighting a (at the time) losing battle with demon rum. In 1978 he turned down a role as pianist/bit player in Cy Coleman’s musical, “I Love My Wife” – coincidentally starring his old college buddy James Naughton – in order to accept an invitation to join what was shaping up to be a big-time rock and roll band – Pierce Arrow. The experience was disappointing, to say the last. After the friendliness of the folk world, he found the mainstream music business hostile and off-putting. Luckily for him, one of his bandmates was experiencing the same feelings, and after two albums on Columbia – “Pierce Arrow” and “Pity the Rich,” the band broke up, and David and his new-found soulmate Robin Batteau began what would be a lifetime collaboration as writers and performers and jingle kings. Buskin & Batteau performed as headliners and also as the back-up band for Tom Rush into the eighties. But by 1981, David, frustrated with lack of progress and any kind of financial security, looked around for an alternative. He found it in the jingle business, which welcomed him with open arms. Over the next few years, he had both songs and jingles recorded by a wide variety of artists, including Judy Collins, Peter, Paul & Mary, Johnny Mathis, Astrud Gilberto, Tom Rush, Dixie Carter, Roberta Flack, Mel Tormé, Take 6, Phoebe Snow, Richie Havens and Arlo Guthrie. The first jingle he sold – “We’re NBC – Just Watch Us Now” – won him the 1983 Clio (advertising’s Oscar) for Best TV Song of 1983. B&B were profiled in Time, People, Musician Magazine and Entertainment Tonight. He received The ASCAP Jamie deRoy Award for Excellence in Songwriting, and the Kate Wolff Award, given annually to the performer who best epitomizes the music and spirit of the late California singer-songwriter. He and Robin took a break from each other in the nineties, and, with Rob Carlson and George Wurzbach, he formed the beloved comedic trio Modern Man, which won him a New York Nightlife Award and a Bistro Award. The group recorded his most widely-known funny song, “Jews Don’t Camp,” several versions of which went viral online. In 2008 he and Robin reunited, recording one of his favorite B&B albums, “Red Shoes and Golden Hearts.” The album included two of his best-known “Buskin ballads,” “Warm” and “All in All.” It also featured a fun homage to the Beatles – “You Really Ought to Call That Girl” – which B&B perform to this day. Both Buskin and Batteau have a long history of producing and performing in benefits for a wide variety of causes: WHY/Hunger, Stand for the Troops, The Hole-In-The-Wall Camp and numerous others. In 2019 he cowrote “Kids In Cages” with gospel master Rashad McPherson and co-produced (with Mr. Naughton) a powerful video about one of America’s most shameful chapters. David also wrote for and performed in the late Isaiah Sheffer’s Thalia Follies, a popular Upper West side political/satirical cabaret. As a writer he has created special material for Bette Midler, Whoopi Goldberg, Paul Newman and Gwyneth Paltrow. As an actor he is inordinately (irrationally, really) proud of a stint in The York Theater’s revival of Sheldon Harnick’s “Dragons,” in which he played Narrator/Peddler/Donkey. “The emotional truth of my donkey in particular left Sheldon speechless,” he recalls. “In fact, he hasn’t spoken to me since.” These days he still does the occasional show (“Two gigs in a row is a tour.”), with Robin or, last December, with his ferociously talented daughter Sophie Buskin (CD: “Sweet Creature”). “That one was billed as ‘A Writer’s Retrospective,’ and it was really fun doing songs I haven’t performed in a while or ever. And working with Sophie is a real slice of heaven.” His recent April Fools Tour doing silly stuff with Christine Lavin, John Forster, Shanna in a Dress, Julie Gold & Don White, “made me laugh a lot,” and since it affected audiences the same way, chances are it will be repeated. It all depends on the meds. Discography: David Buskin, He Used to Treat Her, David Buskin and Robin Batteau, Buskin & Batteau, B&B, Nouveau Retro, Red Shoes and Golden Hearts, Love Remembered, Love Forgot, Modern Immaturity, Assisted Living
Fame | David Buskin net worth and salary income estimation Apr, 2024
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