- December 4, 2025
-
-
Loading
Loading
The science fiction writer Robert Heinlein gets credit for saying, “Every generation thinks it invented sex.” That observation may be true, but cabaret singer Carole J. Bufford understands the long history of learning about the birds and the bees. For her summer cabaret show at Florida Studio Theatre, “Too Darn Hot: Songs for a Summer Night,” Bufford digs deep into the annals of American popular music to celebrate summer pastimes of days gone by, including one called “makin’ whoopee.”
Before TV, there was radio. Its songs and serials educated the young about the rites of adulthood in a different manner than did the minister in his pulpit. For those with the means, the automobile provided a way to get off the front porch and escape the watchful eyes of parents and neighbors.
Away from home, there were the pleasures of the movie theater and later the drive-in. For many years, the drugstore counter was a prime meeting spot for members of the opposite sex. It was here that you cooled off with Coca-Cola, which came from a fountain, not a bottle or a can.
The drugstore often had a jukebox, and in some places people even danced. Such dangerous activity was banned in bars and restaurants by the City of New York in 1926. The Cabaret Law remained on the books until 2017.
Bufford spans the decades in her FST show. Her repertoire — and her costumes —transport you to a slower, steamier time where summer provided ample opportunity for misbehavin’.
As the Cole Porter song that gives Bufford the title for her show reminds us, sometimes it’s “Too Darn Hot” to do much of anything, except perhaps roll in the hay. But there could be a price to pay for such abandon, as Bufford warns us with that Jazz Age favorite, “Makin’ Whoopee.”
Bufford, a red-headed siren, organizes her show by the summer months —June, July, August and September. Each month is introduced with a poem to set the mood. During the show, it quickly becomes evident that not only is Bufford a dazzling entertainer, she is a scholar.
A lot of cabaret singers ad lib their librettos (the spoken word part of the show), but Bufford has done her homework, not only in her wide-ranging selection of songs, but in the stories behind them. Even those well-versed in the popular music of the 20th century may learn something new.
With its subtitle “Songs for a Summer Night,” it’s not unexpected to hear Bufford croon George Gershwin’s 1934 song, “Summertime,” his aria from the opera “Porgy and Bess.” But Bufford demonstrates her vocal versatility by performing the song in the style of Janis Joplin, who recorded it with Big Brother and the Holding Company in 1968 before going solo.
Sometimes Bufford flips the switch, like when she belts out Bob Seger’s “Fire Down Below,” a masculine salute to strippers and their faithful followers that one might not expect in the set of a songstress, even a sultry one. With this and other knowing nods in “Too Darn Hot,” Bufford embraces the power of female sexuality.
But the heat of summer can lead to destructive pursuits. Randy Newman is known for his humorous and often sardonic ditties like “Short People” and “I Love LA,” the tongue-in-cheek anthem he wrote for the 1984 Summer Olympics.
But how many people have heard Newman’s “Let’s Burn Down the Cornfield”? Bufford brings her considerable powers of persuasion to this sinister number. Her seductive delivery reminds you that in a one-horse town before high-tech pastimes, this might have been someone’s idea of fun.
Back in the days before information was instantly available on the internet, a New York City-based performer such as Bufford would have had to spend a lot of time in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, a cultural repository of books, sheet music, audio and video.
But with the help of Google and evolving AI tools, Bufford isn’t tied to the Lincoln Center NYPL branch. Thanks to her research both online and off, you’ll leave “Too Darn Hot” full of factoids that you can regale your friends with or maybe win a round of “Jeopardy!” if you watch at home.
During a recent performance, Bufford confessed to her audience that she was once criticized by a professor at Ithaca College, where she earned a BFA in musical theater, for being too old-fashioned in her musical tastes. Obviously, she’s gotten the last laugh, having made a career out of cabaret.
Bufford’s created her own shows, including “speak easy” featuring Grammy winners Vince Giordano & The Nighthawks, and has performed with Michael Feinstein’s Great American Songbook series at Jazz @ Lincoln Center and in “Broadway by the Year” concerts in New York and California.
When Bufford was growing up in what she calls a “one-stoplight town” in Georgia, there weren’t many opportunities to hone her performing skills. To help her accumulate showbiz credits, her father directed her in “The Wizard of Oz” when she was in high school.
A Georgia 4-H club, “Clovers and Company,” brought Bufford together with like-minded young performers. “I loved it because I finally got to meet people like me,” she says.
Talent shows and singing at beauty pageants while judges tallied their votes also helped Bufford gain more stage experience.
Along the way, she figured out that “nearly all the songs I loved, especially those in the Great American Songbook, came from Broadway musicals.” That’s why she decided to major in musical theater.
Asked how her musical taste developed as a child, Bufford says her mother, father and grandparents all played a part. Her dad was fond of the Great American Songbook, her mom liked Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand and her grandparents played country and western music on the radio and stereo.
But the single greatest influence on Bufford’s budding professional aspirations was a woman who made a name for herself as “Liza with a Z.” That’s Liza Minnelli, the daughter of Garland and film director Vincent Minnelli.
“We had a Betamax at home and my dad had recorded Liza’s 1980 HBO special in New Orleans. I used to come home from school every day and watch it,” she recalls. Bufford was also a student of Garland’s now classic movies, including “Summer Stock,” “For Me and My Gal” and “Easter Parade.”
After establishing herself in New York’s cabaret scene, Bufford got the chance to meet her idol for the first time in 2011. The meeting came during a break while Bufford was performing with Vince Giordano & The Nighthawks during his regular Tuesday gigs downstairs at the Hotel Edison. (They have since moved to the jazz club Birdland.)
“Vince brought me over and introduced me to Liza and Michael Feinstein,” Bufford recalls. “She was lovely and complimentary. That week it seemed like I saw Liza at least five times. She must have thought I was stalking her.”
Since then, Feinstein and Liza (like all divas, she’s known only by her first name) have become part of Bufford’s extended circle or vice versa.
“Some friends of mine are involved in her memoir, which is coming out next year,” Bufford says. “I can’t wait.”
“Too Darn Hot” marks the fourth time that Bufford has brought a show to Florida Studio Theatre at the invitation of FST Associate Artist Catherine Randazzo, who supervises the Summer Cabaret series. Bufford was last on the FST stage in 2021, with “Vintage POP!” Two years earlier, she starred in “Come Together: When the ‘60s Met the ‘70s.”
Her maiden journey at FST was in 2017 with “Roar,” where she celebrated the music of the flapper and speakeasy era. You can hear echoes of that time throughout “Too Darn Hot.”
“Roar” was an offshoot of “speak easy” (lower case intentional), the collaboration between Bufford and the Nighthawks that played at the New York City nightclub 54 Below.
The first time Bufford had a gig at FST it was for eight weeks. This year she’ll be here for three months, until Sept. 14, when “Too Darn Hot” closes.
“Usually in cabaret, a show is only a night or maybe as long as a week. But with the long runs at FST, my shows become a cabaret/theater hybrid,” she says.
Before being hired by FST, she came to Sarasota for the first time under the auspices of Artist Series Concerts, then run by Lee Dougherty Ross. “That was around 2012 or 2013, which was when my cabaret career really started taking off,” she says.
After discovering the warmth of Sarasota audiences, Bufford is always happy to return to Florida’s “Cultural Coast,” especially to FST. “I can’t think of a place in the country that has such a dedicated subscriber base,” she says.
It’s an article of faith that an artist will say that their latest endeavor is their best yet. Bufford is no different, although she seems quite sincere. In her opinion, what helps makes “Too Darn Hot” so effective is her band. Joining Bufford on stage are Isaac Mingus on bass, Angela Steiner on piano and Aaron Nix on drums.
Bufford put together the trio herself, with help from Mingus, who accompanied her on “Vintage POP!” He suggested Nix and Steiner, whom he knows from working on musicals at Asolo Repertory Theatre.
Mingus, a 2023 New College of Florida grad, is a Renaissance man who has attracted a cult following among jazz enthusiasts in Sarasota despite his tender age.
Nix is also a local, but the adjunct professor of percussion at State College of Florida has performed with touring Broadway shows, including “Cats,” Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” and “West Side Story.”
Steiner is a music director based in the Denver area, with extensive national music director and conductor credits. She’s usually in charge of many more instruments than just her own piano.
Bufford generously gives the members of her band a chance to shine and improvise. The chemistry between the three musicians and with Bufford is palpable. It’s clear that four stars are on stage and they all love what they’re doing.
As the creator of “Too Darn Hot,” Bufford worked with her own music director, Ian Herman, to create arrangements. She sent MP3 digital audio files to Mingus, Steiner and Nix ahead of her arrival to prepare them for the FST show.
When she got to town, she and the band had two days to rehearse for “Too Darn Hot.” “But we really needed a half-day because they were so prepared,” she says.
Sitting in FST’s Court Cabaret watching Bufford sing, shimmy and strut (“I don’t dance, really”) surrounded by her tight trio, it’s possible to go briefly back in time, to “when we were young,” to borrow the title of an Adele song in “Too Darn Hot.”
