Bulson, 68, has been the piano man at the restaurant and bar at 529 Queen Anne Ave. N. for 15 years, playing every night except for Monday. And on most of those nights he's joined by singers who show up to belt out everything from old standards to show tunes to the occasional opera aria.
Bulson - who moved to Queen Anne from Capitol Hill about a year ago - seems to know practically all the scores for the numbers the singers choose and can sight-read the sheet music for the few tunes he doesn't. There are limits to his repertoire, though.
"Anything that you would have heard during the '80s and '90s on MTV," he said, "you can almost be assured that I'm not familiar with any of them."
As for the rest, Bulson wouldn't even hazard a guess at how many songs he knows, but he has been he's been teasing music out of the keyboards almost his entire life.
"I started playing before I went to grade school," Bulson said, adding that he's always been able to play by ear.
He started taking lessons when he was in first grade in his hometown of Mexico, Mo., which is around 50 miles from the state capitol, Jefferson City.
Bulson also worked on his chops growing up by playing Wednesday nights and Sundays at the Nazarene church he attended. He said he can still remember the hymns he played in those days.
In high school he toured as a pianist with a tent evangelist during the summers. "We went through about five (Midwestern) states," he said.
He dropped out of high school for a year when he was 17 to go to Oklahoma for a gig.
"I originally went there to play for a religious quartet ... but we parted ways. I guess I was a little too wild for them," Bulson grinned.
Apparently, his smoking, drinking and running around with a wild bunch didn't fit in with the group's wholesome image. "Which didn't disturb me at all," he said.
Bulson - who graduated from high school in 1953 but never went to college - said he left Missouri when he was 20. He worked all over the country for several music publishing companies, finally ending up in Seattle with one around 40 years ago.
That was his day job. On top of that, Bulson said he always played two, three and sometime five nights a week in taverns and cocktail lounges. The doubling up continued here in Seattle, where he played piano at a joint called 111 Yesler.
"And they had nothing but opera and Broadway (show tune) material," Bulson said. The singers were always booked beforehand at 111 Yesler, and many of them came from the Seattle Opera Chorus, while some were vocal teachers, he said.
Beginning in 1965, Bulson worked in the International District at a club that later became the China Gate, playing piano for open-mic nights. But in 1969, he dropped the music-publishing job and stuck to performing.
"I finally decided I couldn't work both nights and days," Bulson said.
The gig at Sorry Charlie's has always been an open-mic arrangement, and Bulson said he has a couple of dozen regulars who show up to perform.
It's rare that performers at the club can't hold a tune and sing on key, but it wasn't always like that in the early days, he said.
"It was enough to give you ulcers," Bulson said of the real clunkers. He figures those folks have moved on to karaoke joints, where singing on key isn't necessarily a high priority.
Bulson said performers at Sorry Charlie's cross the age spectrum from the very young to the very old, but the lineup has changed a bit over time.
"Eight or 10 years ago, I had more people from the Civic Light Opera and the Village Theatre in Issaquah," he said.
A relatively new addition to the lineup is people studying music at Cornish College and Seattle Central Community College, Bulson said. Singers from the Gilbert & Sullivan Society also put in an appearance occasionally, and sometimes cast members from local productions will turn up to sing after their shows, he added.
"I never know what to expect," Bulson said. "It's potluck every night." Sometimes it's hot, and sometimes it's not, he conceded. But Bulson wouldn't consider doing anything else for a living.
And as for retiring someday, Bulson said he's not even thinking about the possibility.
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