Guitarist Buddy Fite Chose Life, Family, Music

AMBOY, Clark County - Perhaps the best way to conjure guitarist Buddy Fite's immense warmth is to imagine the former Hell's Angel and his 4-year-old son racing around the lawn.

Michael Fite's mount, a kid-sized four-wheel-drive truck powered by a car battery, awaits the boy's next visit. It's the first thing you see when you step through the door of the double-wide trailer set on a quiet hillside.

"I have an 18-horse garden tractor, and we race the two of them around the yard," says Buddy Fite.

The Hell's Angels Fite ran with in the 1960s might laugh to see his 6-foot-6 bulk scrunched atop a tiny garden tractor instead of stretched out on a Harley. But these days Fite - an accomplished picker who has impressed the likes of Chet Atkins, Willie Nelson and Les Paul - would grin right along with them.

"I'm so glad I can do this; I love spending time with my kid," he says. "Children are so close to creation."

At 59, Fite's closer to creation these days, too, after coming just about as close as possible to its opposite. He's racing his son - and playing some of the most gorgeous, sinuous guitar you'll ever hear - thanks to friends who persuaded him last year to have the laryngectomy that saved him from throat cancer.

Fite is playing clubs again. Mel Bay, the big music publishing house, just released an instruction book and CD dissecting seven of his tunes.

Interest in Fite is clearly rekindling, but his isn't a standard rebirth and rediscovery story. He'll certainly record more if he gets the chance, but don't expect much in the way of touring. He quit a lucrative road gig with Johnny Mathis in the late '60s because he hates airplanes and loves the woods of the Pacific Northwest too much to ever be far away.

At first Fite resisted the laryngectomy.

"I knew something was wrong because my voice kept getting more hoarse," he says. "My throat was giving me trouble for years, but I wasn't going to get the operation - there were some good friends and relatives I was looking forward to seeing on the other side. I figured I'd get to the last two or three months and sell this place and buy another Harley and just ride until I died."

Instead, Denny Handa, a friend for 40 years and a drummer in dozens of bands with Fite, drove to the small logging town of Amboy and up the twisting dirt and gravel road that ends at Fite's driveway. He convinced Fite he needed to watch his son grow up.

Fite now speaks by pressing a finger against the high collar of his T-shirt, closing off the hole in his throat through which he breathes, and directing air into his mouth. His voice is gruff, he sometimes interrupts phrases to gulp more air and at times a look of frustration crosses his face when he can't play a song and explain it at the same time. Still, he seems happy with his decision.

"I'm glad Denny talked me into this," Fite says. "I've already learned a lot from my son. The kid's definitely got my spirit."

Handa swung the Mel Bay deal and drove Fite to Olympia a few months before the operation to record the seven-song CD that accompanies the music book. Because the four albums Fite recorded for Robert Mersey 30 years ago are nearly impossible to find today, this 20-minute sampler is almost the only way to hear a recording of Fite's playing.

Pickers such as Atkins, Nelson (with whom Fite played in an early band) and the late Howard Roberts all got the message. Les Paul first heard Fite when he was demonstrating amplifiers at a 1968 music retailers convention. Paul listened to all that music coming out of one guitar. Then he unplugged the amp.

"A guy that good shouldn't be playing," legend has him saying. He was jesting, of course, and the incident began a lifelong friendship.

"He thinks of the guitar as a keyboard, or as an entire orchestra," Handa says. "He plays that way because nobody ever told him he couldn't."