Rick and Bubba
Rick Burgess (born October 3, 1964 Oxford,Alabama) and Bill "Bubba" Bussey (born March 27, 1964 Jacksonville,Alabama) are two syndicated comedic radio personalities and authors based in Birmingham, Alabama.
| Rick and Bubba | |
|---|---|
| Starring | Rick Burgess Bill 'Bubba' Bussey Calvin 'Speedy' Wilburn 'Don Juan' DeMarco Williams |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| Production | |
| Running time | approx. 1:45 |
| Original release | |
| Network | Turner South |
| Release | September 27, 2002 – April 28, 2006 |
WYSF in Birmingham served as their flagship station until December 2006. Beginning on January 3, 2007, they became the morning hosts on crosstown station WZZK. Their show is heard each weekday morning on over 40 radio stations mostly in the Southern United States including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Two hours of their four-hour program were televised live on the Turner South network until April 28, 2006, as Turner South had been sold to Fox Sports in February 2006. They call themselves "The Two Sexiest Fat Men Alive." Their jokes about their weight problems were also evidenced in their annual "Big Fat Lotto" cash giveaway contests sponsored by WYSF.
Rick and Bubba are heard on a variety of formats, most commonly country music, contemporary hit radio, and news/talk stations.
Their first book, Rick & Bubba's Expert Guide to God, Country, Family & Anything Else We Can Think Of, (ISBN 0-8499-0992-9), was published in March 2006, and quickly became a best-seller at Amazon.com and Books-A-Million as well as making the New York Times best seller list at the number 7 spot in the Miscellaneous category. A second book, The Rick and Bubba Code: The Two Sexiest Fat Men Alive Unlock the Mysteries of the Universe, (ISBN 0-8499-1877-4) was released in June 2007.
The most recent of their many CD's, the 2006 release Radio Gold, Volume 1, reached the number 9 spot on the Billboard Top Comedy Albums chart.
Their big screen debut was in the 2001 film Rustin where they played bartenders Red #1 and Red #2. In the 1999 film Southern Heart they were heard (but not seen) portraying radio personalities.
History
Both Rick and Bubba grew up in Alabama and were active in athletics at their respective high schools. Rick's father, Coach Bill Burgess, was a legendary coach at Oxford High School and later led the Jacksonville State Gamecocks to the 1992 Division II national championship. It was at high school sporting events that they knew of each other. At Jacksonville State University, they became friends by working together at the college's radio station.
After college, Bill got a job as engineer for WQEN, a radio station in Gadsden, Alabama, and recommended Rick for the station's morning show personality. Rick had been working at WHMA-AM radio in Anniston as a DJ. In 1989, he was also the host of a popular Friday night program called "Pigskin Roundup" that recapped high school football games and took live calls from listeners. The previous host of this call-in program had moved to a competing Anniston station and hosted a show at the same time, using the same name. To try to avoid confusion, Rick's show became known as "The Original Pigskin Roundup". Prior to 1989, the "Pigskin Roundup" had been simulcast on both 1390 AM in Anniston ( a low power signal unable to be heard outside of Anniston at night) and 100.5 FM which had a 100,000 watt signal that carried the show across a large part of Alabama and western Georgia. However, in 1989 the FM station had changed formats from easy listening to country music and no longer simulcasted the Friday night football show. Once Rick and Bubba formed a partnership at WQEN, they hosted their own version of this show on Friday nights during football season. The two began to work together to come up with ideas for the show. One of the ideas was to have Bill read Shakespeare in his deep Southern accent. Rick proclaimed that Bill sounded like his Uncle Bubba. The characterization became the basis for one of their first contests called "Good Old Boy Theatre". Other contests currently featured on the show include "Drive Through Password", "Know the Good Book" (Bible trivia), and "The Giant Game of Knowledge". The "Bubba" nickname stuck for Bill. Bubba worked more and more with Rick and eventually became a regular part of Rick's show. The show was renamed "The Rick & Bubba Show," and moved to Birmingham in 1998 when WQEN began targeting the Birmingham market to attract a wider audience. The show moved to WYSF in early 1999, remaining there until the end of 2006. In January 2007 the duo moved their network flagship to crosstown station 104.7 WZZK. A repeat of the morning broadcast of the Rick & Bubba Show can also be heard during the afternoon drive in Birmingham on WZZK's sister station WNCB New Country 97.3.
They often refer to their Christian faith and beliefs on air and have been regarded as a family-safe alternative to "shock jocks" often associated with morning radio.
Other ventures
The duo provided play-by-play commentary for the radio network of the Birmingham Thunderbolts of the XFL in 2001, and owned a short-lived fast food restaurant in Bussey's hometown of Pelham, Alabama in 2002.
They also lent their likenesses and voices to a 1990s series of animated television commercials for Jack's, a Birmingham-area fast food chain. In the ads, they were tormented by "Jumping Jack Chicken", a Mick Jagger-styled rooster.
In 2005 they were cast in a Max Lucado kids' DVD, "A Fruitcake Christmas" (part of the Hermie and Friends series) as the voices and images of two food-hoarding cockroaches, Iggy and Ziggy, where they starred along with Tim Conway and Don Knotts (Hermie and Wormie respectively). Rick and Bubba repeated the roles of Iggy and Ziggy in the 2006 DVD's "To Share or Nut to Share". (In these DVDs Rick is Ziggy and Bubba is Iggy.)
In 2007, Rick and Bubba were cast in an episode of the Christian video series Bibleman: PowerSource called "Crushing the Conspiracies of the Cheater." They played the roles of the evil Whiner Brothers.