Mary Grace CerniKatisse Buckhingham starred as the kid who gave Alyssa Milano a hickey on Who's the Boss. It gets better: He also played flute and saxophone on The Chronic.
Actually, it gets even better than that: He recorded Will Ferrell's jazz flute solo in Anchorman. (The scene is below.)
Born outside of Montreal, Buckingham had hippie parents — “My mom saw [my name] in a dream,” he says. They were also songwriters and folk musicians, and after the family moved to L.A. Buckingham attended art school in South Central where he studied jazz band and acting.
Buckingham did TV commercials, plays, and, of course, the Who's the Boss part.
“I was only like 13 when I started acting professionally in theater. In Variety and Hollywood Reporter, I was getting the best reviews of anyone in the play,” says Buckingham, immodestly.
He eventually decided to focus on music and, at age 20, he was approached to record saxophone and flute on Dr. Dre's The Chronic. (The, um, best rap album of all time. No big deal.)
He took the gig not really knowing who Dre was. “I went to the studio,” he remembers. “Snoop was there. We were just playing pool. I didn't know who he was either.”
Since then, Buckingham has made a living through his original music and session work, playing with everyone from Prince to Lionel Richie to Herbie Hancock.
Perhaps his best-known performance came in the realm of comedy, in Anchorman, for the scene which, as he notes, has become synonymous with the phrase “jazz flute.”
“It was just another recording session. I'm not going to lie — it's been a great calling card”
Lately, his focus is on his own songs. Buckingham's group, Katisse — which includes him and other hand-picked musicians — has released two albums, the most recent this year.
His solo work is an amalgamation of jazz, rap, hip hop, Latin, and world music, “an unfiltered conglomeration of all the styles that I love.”
Although Buckingham isn't slated for a flute scene in the upcoming Anchorman sequel, he will always be, for our money, the greatest jazz flutist under the sun.
Katisse play tonight, November 19, at the Baked Potato and December 5 at WitzEnd.
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