playing a grand piano in
Washington Square Park, New York City (
right) in 2006 , a street performer and former one-man band who performs regularly in the
Little Tokyo community of Los Angeles , a London busker from the 19th century •
5 Seconds of Summer, Australian pop rock band. Prior to achieving international fame, the band busked in
Rouse Hill and other parts of
Sydney. •
Abby the Spoon Lady is a professional spoon player, street performer, and
busking advocate who lives in
Asheville, North Carolina. •
Josephine Baker started street dancing to make money and was recruited for the St. Louis Chorus
vaudeville show at the age of 15, which started her dancing career. •
Joshua Bell, a noted classical violinist, posed as a busker in the
L'Enfant Plaza Metro station in
Washington, D.C. at rush hour in 2007, as part of a feature in
The Washington Post. In the 45 minutes that Bell played, only seven people out of over a thousand who passed by stopped to watch, and he took in just over $32.
Gene Weingarten later won a
Pulitzer Prize for the story. •
Catfish the Bottleman a well-known busker from Sydney, Australia, so inspired Van McCann of
Catfish and the Bottlemen that he named his band after him. He watched him perform as a child and said that it was his first memory of music. •
Tracy Chapman began her career busking in
Harvard Square in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. •
Mike Doughty, former singer for
Soul Coughing, released
Busking, which contains 12 tracks from a 2007 busking performance in the
14th Street subway station in New York City. •
Newton Faulkner has been known to busk and video footage of him busking has been made available on YouTube, including a full acoustic cover of
Queen's "
Bohemian Rhapsody". •
Benjamin Franklin, the American inventor and statesman, was a street performer. He composed songs, poetry and prose about current events and went out in public and performed them. He would then sell printed copies of them to the public. He was dissuaded from busking by his father who convinced him it was not worth the stigmas that some people attach to it. It was this experience that helped form his beliefs in free speech, which he wrote about in his journals. •
Mark Goffeney, aka 'Big Toe', known for playing guitar despite being born
without arms. •
Shannon Hoon, former singer for
Blind Melon, was known to busk all over the U.S. •
Colin Huggins, a classical pianist who performs on a
Steinway grand piano in
Washington Square Park and other parks in
Greenwich Village,
New York City. •
Henry Johnson (acrobat) (1806–1910),
circus acrobat and street entertainer using
acrobatics,
tightrope-walking etc. •
Keytar Bear, a busker in Boston, Massachusetts, who wears a bear suit and plays a keytar. •
Guy Laliberté was a street performer when he founded the
Cirque du Soleil theatrical company in 1984. •
Loreena McKennitt, developing a passion for Celtic music, learned to play the
Celtic harp and began busking at various places, including St. Lawrence Market in
Toronto in order to earn money to record her first album. •
Edward McMichael was a celebrated street musician known as Seattle's "Tuba Man", who busked outside the city's various sports and performing arts venues. In 2008, he was killed by attackers who were attempting to rob him. •
Sterling Magee and
Adam Gussow, AKA
Satan and Adam, were busking on
125th Street in Harlem, New York City, in the summer of 1987 when the members of
U2, accompanied by a film crew, paused to watch the blues duo. The scene later appeared in the film
Rattle and Hum. •
George Michael used to busk near the
London Underground, performing songs such as
'39 by
Queen. •
Peter Mulvey, the singer-songwriter, recorded an entire album down in the
Boston subway, where he was a regular busker. In most cases, songs were recorded in one or two takes. •
Kristyna Myles won the BBC Radio 5 Live Busker of the Year competition in 2005 and has gone on to sign a recording contract with Decca. Her debut album is due for release in September 2012. •
Paul Oscher, a famous Blues musician and harp player, has busked as "Brooklyn Slim" on the Venice Boardwalk to try out new material. Oscher, a two-time
W.C Handy Award winner, was the harp player for
Muddy Waters and his band in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He currently performs at blues festivals in the U.S. and internationally. •
Amanda Palmer, singer-songwriter, internet personality and founder of
The Dresden Dolls started out performing as a
living statue around the world. •
Don Partridge, an English singer and songwriter, known as the "king of the buskers". Achieved unexpected commercial success in the UK and Europe in the late 1960s with the songs "Rosie", "Blue Eyes" and "Breakfast On Pluto". •
Natalia Paruz, aka 'Saw Lady', who can be seen in movies such as
Dummy and heard on many movie soundtracks, has been playing the
musical saw in the New York City subway since 1994. • Surf/ska band the
Red Elvises boosted their career by playing outside in
Santa Monica, California, on the
Third Street Promenade. Their manic performances attracted such large crowds that city officials asked them to stop. •
Alice Tan Ridley, busked in New York City subway stations for 30 years; semi-finalist in ''
America's Got Talent'', mother of
Gabourey Sidibe •
Rodrigo y Gabriela, began their career by busking in Dublin, Ireland. •
Peg Leg Sam, a famous harmonica player from South Carolina, preferred busking over all other forms/venues. His most requested song was "
John Henry". •
Daniel Seavey performed in the streets of Portland, Oregon, and subsequently joined boy band
Why Don't We. • Ketch Secor, whose group
Old Crow Medicine Show started with busking and remains committed to it, has said: "People ... have short attention spans. ... So if you can get 'em to stop ... if you can get 'em to listen with a song, then you've got yourself a keeper." •
The Piccadilly Rats, street performance group from Manchester, England •
Allie Sherlock sings on
Grafton Street,
Dublin •
Tuba Skinny, street band in New Orleans •
Rod Stewart began hanging around folk singer
Wizz Jones and busking, at
Leicester Square and other London spots in 1962. On several trips over the next 18 months, Jones and Stewart took their act to
Brighton and then to Paris, sleeping under bridges over the river
Seine, and then finally to
Barcelona. •
Tash Sultana, an Australian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who busked on the streets of Melbourne. •
SungBeats, a beatbox loop artist won the
Amateur Night at the Apollo competition in 2014. •
Damo Suzuki, the singer of the band
Can, was found by band members Czukay and Liebezeit busking outside a
Munich café and was asked to perform with the band that same night. •
Tones and I, an Australian indie-pop singer-songwriter and musician. •
KT Tunstall, a popular Scottish singer, has been recorded busking in Glasgow. •
Nik Turner, former saxophonist with
Hawkwind and
Inner City Unit, continues to busk regularly in the streets of his adopted hometown
Cardigan. •
T. Rex members
Marc Bolan and
Steve Peregrin Took first performed as an acoustic guitar/bongos duo when they went busking together in
Hyde Park in summer 1967 after their electric equipment had been confiscated by
Track Records and their two bandmates had both left. In this acoustic format, the duo would go on to release three albums. •
Unipiper, a performer in Portland, Oregon, is known for playing the bagpipes on a unicycle. •
Violent Femmes were discovered by
James Honeyman-Scott (of
The Pretenders) on 23 August 1981, when the band was busking on a street corner in front of the
Oriental Theatre, the
Milwaukee venue that
The Pretenders would be playing later that night.
Chrissie Hynde invited them to play a brief acoustic set after the opening act. •
Yamunabai Waikar, decorated Indian folk–
Lavani–
Tamasha artist busked with her mother as a child. •
Billy Waters, a one-legged busker who rose to prominence in London during the nineteenth century. •
Hayley Westenra at one time busked on the streets of Christchurch, New Zealand. == Gallery ==