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At this year’s San Benito County Saddle Horse Show & Rodeo, coming June 26–28, announcer Ed Kutz will be at the arena as he has been for the last 36 years, delivering the play-by-play commentary—and the color—that fans need to keep up with the fast-paced action.
“Ed is an iconic part of the history of our show,” Saddle Horse Show Director David Westrick said. “For a lot of people, it’s just the familiarity of hearing that voice that they all know. It’s very comforting and welcoming. Ed is woven into the fabric of the event itself.”
Born in Hazel Hawkins Hospital in 1947, when it was still on Monterey Street, Kutz reflects a time when the city population was less than 5,000, when everybody in town knew everyone else.
“Everybody’s mother was kind of your mother,” he said. “If you were 12 and lit a cigarette at the end of town, when you got home, your mother already knew about it. It was a really tight community. To this day, there are people sitting in the grandstands I played Little League with.”
Kutz was around five when an aunt took him to the rodeo, and though the memories are dim, he still recalls two things: his aunt’s cowboy boots and, as they were leaving, knowing he really liked the experience.
“Don’t ask me why,” he said. “About 10 years later, a friend was going to a junior rodeo, and he said, ‘You want to go to a junior rodeo?’ So that was the start of it. My mother used to say that if she had known where I went, she’d never have signed the release.”
The 1963 San Benito County Saddle Horse Show and Rodeo was the scene of a teenage Kutz’s first attempt at riding a bull. It was a rite of passage for young men at the time, a “daredevil challenge.”
“They’d ask you, ‘When are you going to enter the bull riding?’” he said. “They furnished the equipment, and I think there were probably 40 or 50 other guys. Well, I’ve always been a thrill seeker, so I was very inclined to that kind of thing.”
Kutz stayed with the junior rodeo until he aged out at 18. By then, he was a seasoned rider, with the rodeo circuit taking him to Salinas, Livermore, Dublin, Pacifica, King City, Gustine and points beyond. Next, as a student at Gavilan College, he joined the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association.
“I came into a brand new ball game,” he said. “The biggest thing that hooked me was that I was too short to play football or basketball, and not fast enough for track. But in the rodeo, they say, ‘Oh, you want to get on? Give me the money. Get on.’ They couldn’t care less.”
After four years at Gavilan College and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, he joined the pros in 1971 and, as he said, “I’ve been gone ever since.”
“All you need is guts,” Kutz said. “You want to get out there and have them talk about you. Then your mind’s telling you, ‘Boy, take a look at the horns on this one. This one could really hurt you.’ So it is a constant battle between your heart and your mind, but that’s the way it goes.”
Sometimes, he said, the mind can also work to your advantage, such as when he was set to ride the Bucking Bull of the Year at the Houston Astrodome for all of eight seconds.
“I knew he turned back to the right,” Kutz said, “was a big and strong Charolais. We made about two jumps, and I’m thinking, “This is just like steer riding.’ Then he gave me the power and threw me 30 feet out into the middle of the arena.”
A year later, at a rodeo in Sheridan, Wyoming, he caught the same bull, but now he had the advantage.
“I knew to just relax those first two jumps,” Kutz said, “and then get ready because he was coming to the right. And sure enough, he did. I rode him to a standstill because I had been mentally preparing by constantly rewinding those eight seconds in my mind.”
In 1983, he inadvertently paved the way for the work he is now known for by entertaining his friends “after a few libations” with his impression of announcer Bob Tallman, the 12-time Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) Announcer of the Year.
“It was kind of a hoot,” Kutz said. “Well, Lex Connelly, who was a big name and the manager for the Cow Palace, heard me. He said, ‘I understand you want to announce?’ I said, ‘Lex, I never even thought about it; I was just making fun of Bob Tallman.’”
Nonetheless, he followed Connelly down to Fresno to be his color man and worked six performances with him before Connelly died in an airplane crash on his way to Washington.
“Then I was on my own,” Kutz said. “Starting out in the announcing business, you have to get out and sell yourself, calling people and letting them know you’re available. Then I got picked up by Cotton Roser with the Flying U Rodeo Company and worked about 25 years with him.”
There were several things he liked about the job: it was in California, he could pay his mortgage and still rodeo on the weekends instead of heading out to the circuit again. And it also brought him back in contact with the Saddle Horse Show.
“Bob Hansen heard I had started to announce,” Kutz said, “and wanted me to do the show. At that time, the PRCA had a stipulation that if you worked another rodeo not sanctioned by them, you wouldn’t be allowed to try for the national finals.”
Saying he had “big dreams and expectations” of one day reaching the finals, he declined until three years later, in 1990, when the PRCA finally relinquished that rule.
“When they called again,” Kutz said, “I said okay, and it’s been that way ever since.”
Announcer Ted Dwyer, who has known Kutz since the early days of his mimicking Tallman, said that Kutz’s style was ahead of its time.
“He’d make remarks that maybe at that time rodeo wasn’t ready for,” Dwyer said. “I was in the arena as a rodeo clown, listening to some of the stuff that Ed did, and I’m thinking, ‘Why isn’t he out here in the arena being a rodeo clown? Because he is hilarious to be around.”
Dwyer said one thing that makes Kutz exceptional is his extensive knowledge of the sport, particularly regarding local participants.
“He grew up around Hollister,” he said, “so he knows a lot of the people, and he’s got stories about all of them, some you can’t tell on the microphone. But he’s an exceptional person with a big heart, and he’s still just as sharp as he ever was ”
Kutz said anyone can do five minutes of announcing, but the art is in doing three and a half hours and maintaining your freshness and commentary.
“I get as involved as someone competing,” he said. “I’m watching everything and trying to help the audience understand what’s going on in the arena. It’s like being a ringmaster in a circus. You’re introducing the person and explaining what they’re trying to do while they perform.”
Kutz said the hardest part is to hit all of the points of his commentary while the rodeo participants in the arena are “clicking on all cylinders.”
“I’m working with a variable I can’t control,” he said, “but it feels good when it works. Like when the gate opens exactly as I finish my buildup for a rider. Getting the audience to participate is the big thing for me. The more you cheer, the more adrenaline you pump into the athlete.”
Kutz said the thing he likes the best about being an announcer at the rodeo is the chance to be part of something that he loves so much.
“I sacrificed a lifetime trying to be a champ,” he said. “I never did turn out to be one, but I get a chance to participate in the feeling. When I see other people win championships, in my own mind, I think maybe that could have been me.”
The San Benito County Saddle Horse Show & Rodeo takes place on June 26–28 at Bolado Park & Event Center, 9000 Airline Hwy in Tres Pinos.
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