Carl Bonafede 1940-2026: A Spirit Devoted to the Sound of Chicago
Carl Bonafede, sharp-dressed man.
Maybe you saw him during recent summers selling colorful umbrella hats on the streets in front of Wrigley Field. Or perhaps you once bumped into this diminutive character at the Maxwell Street Market. You definitely heard him.
Carl Bonafede was one of Chicago’s most colorful talent scouts, record producers, and pitchmen. He co-produced the Buckinghams 1967 smash “Kind of a Drag” at Chess studios in Chicago. He booked the amazing soul act Baby Huey and the Baby Sitters, who celebrated Curtis Mayfield’s “Mighty Mighty.” He was on board for recording and producing 235 singles released in Chicago from the early 1960s to the early 1970s.
Bonafede died March 30 of complications from pneumonia at St. Francis Hospital in Chicago. He was 85 years old.
Bonafede put the different in DIY.
He was nicknamed “The Screaming Wildman” for his high-pitched radio commercial work. He was a product of the Maxwell Street hustle, a Ron Popeil with a pop beat. In the late 1950s, Bonafede drove his Oldsmobile ‘88 around Lane Tech and Von Steuben high schools, giving out free records from distributors on South Michigan Avenue. He was often accompanied by a small person named Cesar. Cesar had a parrot that spoke fluent Italian.
“Cesar was a sword swallower and a fire eater,” Bonafede said in a 2010 conversation at Beverly Records on the south side of Chicago. “I found him working at a car wash. I’d put a throw rug on top of my hood, and Cesar would climb up and perform between the sound columns. All the teachers at Lane Tech wondered, ‘Who is this guy and why is he giving away free music?’ Back in those days there were no noise ordinances. There weren’t policemen at the schools.” Yes, this is a Chicago that will never happen again.
Not a fan of life’s rain delays (Via Carl’s FB page)
I last spoke with Bonafede in February of 2015 when I invited him and Carl Giammarese of the Buckinghams on my Saturday night WGN-AM radio show. I got away with a lot of fun stuff doing that show. Bonafede gave me a self-made “CD Biography of a Life Time of Music Amazing Occupations And Achievements.” The double-CD featured his acts like the Daughters of Eve, the late Elvis Presley influenced singer Ral Donner, the bubble-gum drenched Lincoln ParkZoo and The Fabulous Centuries, a band that included future Buckinghams Giammarese and Nick Fortuna.
Bonafede had no need for social media. He sent out colorful hand-made flyers with cut out ‘45s, twinkling stars and clef notes. In 2010 Bonafede found an empathetic biographer in former Sun-Times sportswriter Joel Bierig who composed his 16-page “Royalty in Rock and Roll” magazine that in 2016 became the 346-page “The Screaming Wildman (Vibrations from the Dawn of Chicago Rock).” Bonafede told Bierig that he once scored a new car by winning the Sun-Times “Beat the Champions” bowling contest. He did have balls. At the time Bonafede was working as a security guard.
Thanks for the memories!
David Letterman sideman Paul Shaffer was a “Screaming Wildman” fan having heard him clear-channel on WLS-AM while growing up in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Shaffer gave a “Screaming Wildman” shout out after playing “Kind of a Drag” on the night that William “Refrigerator” Perry appeared on the Letterman show.
Bonafede told me that a Catholic school priest tagged him with the “Screaming Wildman” nickname because of his screeching radio spots on WLS and WCFL. “Those commercials used to be on 20 times on each station when they were fighting one another,” said Bonafede, a 1959 graduate of Cooley Vocational High School. “The Buckinghams had a jingle out [“Go With the Go Group”] with Mr. Norm’s Grand Spaulding Dodge. At that time, the commercial was more famous than the record. It was ‘Johnny B. Goode’ with different words.”
Bonafede was born in the Little Italy section of Chicago. His parents immigrated to Chicago in the 1930s from Palermo, Sicily. Bonafede’s father worked for the city pushing a cart as a trash collector. As a hobby his father crushed grapes in the basement to make wine for the family. Bonafede began singing at four years–mostly Italian–in church and neighborhood street festivals.
Carl before playing accordion on the Morris B. Sachs Amateur Hour in Chicago. (From Carl FB page.)
Bonafede moved to a Seminary Avenue three-flat in the De Paul neighborhood at age 14 with his parents. His immediate family included three brothers and a sister. A lifelong bachelor, Bonafede inherited the building and lived in the basement apartment.
He has no known survivors. But he has friends like Giammarese who kept in touch with the colorful promoter until the final curtain.
“Carl was a real Chicago street guy and a hustler,” Giammarese said in a Tuesday conversation from his west suburban home. “He knew everything about Maxwell Street. When he started managing us he brought us to Maxwell Street to pick out matching stage suits. It was Smoky Joe’s. He was bold.” In recent years Bonafede could be found at the reborn Maxwell Street repairing broken wrist watches. He knew the value of a good time.
Shopping at Beverly Records (provided.)
Giammarese met Bonafede in 1964 when he was spinning records at the old Holiday Ballroom in Jefferson Park. Gimmarese was a member of the Centuries.
“Carl was the first person to take an interest on management level, billed us as ‘The Fabulous Centuries’ (it had to be fabulous!) and our first paying gig was at the Vogue Ballroom in Chicago. I would also met my future wife when we played there. He was putting on a lot of teen hops.
“After changing our name to The Buckinghams, Carl was instrumental in getting us a record deal with U.S.A. Records.” U.SA. was at 2131 S. Michigan Ave., across the street from the Chess studio. Other U.S.A. artists included Michael and the Messengers and Oscar Hamod and the Majestics from Gary, IN. The label was a spinoff of All State Distributing, the local distributor for Chess and Motown. This was some of the product Bonafede would drive around town.
“He told my dad in Italian that he would get us a hit record,” Gimmarese said. “And he did! Relentless in trying to find us a potential hit song, he got ‘Kind of a Drag’ from Jim Holvay. Carl showed up with his reel to reel tape player and put the microphone to Jim’s voice and guitar and brought it to us.”
Giammarese credited Bonafede with the Buckinghams early success. Bonafede scored a Buckinghams appearance on the WGN-TV variety show “All Time Hits.” The show was syndicated which expanded the band’s audience. Giammarrese said, “ Kind of a Drag’ changed everything. It became the number one record in the country (in 1967).”
Bonafede co-produced “Kind of a Drag” with Dan Belloc, band leader of the Billy May Orchestra and owner of he Holiday Ballroom. His trombone player Frank Tizinsky wrote the powerful charts. The Buckinghams actually preceded the Rolling Stones into the Chess studio. “We had to be the first pop band to record at Chess,” Giammarese said.
Bonafede also booked the Buckinghams into the Budland ballroom in the basement of the Pershing Hotel, 6400 S. Cottage Grove. Bonafede said the Buckinghams were the first white pop act to play the Black dance hall. Bonafede also hired Black radio personalities like Lucky Cordell and Floyd Brown to emcee white dances. “He would try anything,” Gimmarese said. “We had the matching suits and he would buy one for himself. We’d show up at the gig wanting to impress people and there he is on stage spinning records in that same outfit.”
2011 Chicago tribute to Screaming Wildman (Provided.)
Baby Huey and the Babysitters are a big thing these days with soul music crate diggers. Between 1968 and 1970, Bonafede booked the wild Chicago psychedelic soul act (along with the Ides of March and Shadows of Knight) for Cask Attractions in Lincolnwood.
Baby Huey, a.k.a. James Ramey, weighed 400 pounds and died of heart failure in October 1970. He was 26. Singer-songwriter Donnie Hathaway encouraged Curtis Mayfield to sign Baby Huey to his Curtom label.
About 35 years ago, Bonafede became a regular at the iconic Beverly Records, 11612 Western Ave. He arrived for our 2010 interview wearing a shocking blue silk suit with a multi-horseshoe pattern. He looked like he walked out of a Tom Waits song. The Screaming Wildman was proud to declare that he picked up the threads for 99 cents at Village Discount, 26th and Pulaski.
“He always came in dressed up,” said long-time Beverly store owner Jack Dreznes. “It was his uniform. He was the ultimate showman, always promoting. He bought a lot of things and had me record things for him and send them to him. He ended up storing archives at the store.”
The late Dick Biondi was the popular rock jock known as “The Wild-I-tralian.” (Check out Pamela Enzweiler-Pulice’s fine documentary “The Voice That Rocked America-The Dick Biondi Story”) In 2010 The Wild-I-tralian remembered the Screaming Wildman: “He was always promoting,” Biondi told me. “If he wanted to get a record played, he would bend your ear until you either gave in or called the cops. In 1966, I was at KRLA in Los Angeles. ‘Kind of a Drag’ had just come out. Carl came all the way to California and spent three days with me. We finally got our program director to put it on, and that kicked it off in L.A.”
The two Carls visit WGN-AM in 2015. From left, Carl B., me, Carl G. (Photo by Cubs fan Dan Long.)
The Buckinghams long-time assistant, Susan Rakis became Bonafede’s caregiver for the last eight years. Rakis took him to his doctor’s appointments and helped him plan his funeral.
She listened to his stories.
“We’d go to the bank, and people would line up to say hello,” she said on Wednesday. “He was like a rock star. It was amazing. He’d introduce me to his nurses and doctors, saying, ‘Susan does the same job for me that I did for the Buckinghams in the 1960s.’ But of course I wasn’t his manager.”
Bonafede never gave up. He carried Chicago fortitude in every sharp suit pocket. Giammarese said, “Until a year ago he was bugging me, ‘Who do you know at Columbia Records? I said, ‘Carl, it’s really not Columbia, it’s Sony now.’ So he says, ‘Who do you know at Sony? We could do this.’ He was determined to still make something happen. I told him the whole industry had changed.”
Perhaps that was the beauty of Carl Bonafede.
He stayed true to himself in the winds of change.
A wake and funeral for Carl Bonafede will be held between 10 a.m. and noon April 7 at Cumberland Chapels 8300 W. Lawrence in Norridge. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana, 20 S. Clark, Chicago, IL. 60603. Please mark donations to the attention of Susan Rakis. Carl Bonafede loved the Girl Scout cookies Trefoils and Do-si-dos.
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