‘Bucket Man’ drummer gained fame for unique sound on street
“We are all devastated.” Brian Compton, a bassist, music producer and longtime friend of Larry Hunt’s who frequently played along with him
Larry “Bucket Man” Hunt, a familiar, clamorous presence known for playing a bucket drum set for passing tourists on San Francisco’s Market Street, has died.
Brian Compton, a bassist, music producer and longtime friend of Hunt’s who frequently played with him, said the drummer died Thursday. Compton said friends were organizing a memorial service at the end of the month that would incorporate the pots and drums that Hunt was famous for.
Officials at the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner confirmed Hunt’s death in an email to The Chronicle. He was 64. The agency did not provide a cause of death.
Hunt, a well-known figure downtown, gained national attention when he appeared in the 2006 Will Smith movie “The Pursuit of Happyness” and on “America’s Got Talent.” He also courted controversy from local businesses, who did not always appreciate his almost-daily concert at the corner of Market Street near the Powell Street BART Station.
But tourists often appreciated the performance, often stopping to take videos with their phones. Hunt told The Chronicle in 2016 that he “made San Francisco more alive.”
Hunt’s unique sound came from a drum set he fashioned himself out of 14 5-gallon buckets, three cooking pots, a cowbell and duct tape. The drummer, who played his last show in January, also had a following among local musicians.
“We are all devastated,” said Compton, who first met Hunt near UC Berkeley in the late 1990s.
“Every time I would see him on the Berkeley campus playing drums,” he said. “As a bass player, I liked what I heard.”
Soon the pair began playing gigs at college parties. Compton told the drummer that the money for buskers would be better in San Francisco.
“There are too many crazy people in San Francisco,” Compton recalled Hunt saying.
“You’ll fit right in,” Compton told him.
Like other buskers, Hunt filled downtown San Francisco with music and energy until the city went dark in the earliest months of the pandemic.
Hunt wouldn’t reclaim his Market Street perch until more than a year and half later, when many street performers returned.
Writing about San Francisco’s downtown resurgence in the wake of the worst parts of the pandemic, Chronicle columnist Heather Knight described Hunt’s self-described “trademark” move: lighting his drumsticks on fire and licking the flames.
“It feels a lot more like San Francisco,” Knight wrote, “when you can once again stumble upon break dancing, singing, guitar strumming, juggling and, yes, even flame licking on the city’s streets.”