Terry "Buffalo" Ware, the Norman guitarist who spent six decades as a sideman, mentor and quiet backbone of Oklahoma's music scene, died Aug. 5 after a year-long battle with lung cancer. He was 76.

Within days, tributes poured in from musicians he'd played beside, artists he'd coached and neighbors who knew him simply as the guy who walked to the University of Oklahoma campus on fine afternoons to pick up his wife Jeannie from work.

"The reason this is so hard is that Terry wasn't always standing in the center of the frame. He was the thing that held the frame together," Shari Jackson, executive director of The Depot's Summer Breeze Concert Series and the Norman Music Festival, told NonDoc. "I think everyone who knew him felt like they were one of his best friends."

Born in Shattuck and raised in northwest Oklahoma, Ware's musical life ignited in 1964 when he watched The Beatles perform on "The Ed Sullivan Show." He enrolled at OU, graduated in 1972 and even spent a year in the Sooners marching band before heading to Red River, New Mexico, where he met Ray Wylie Hubbard. The two formed Ray Wylie Hubbard & The Cowboy Twinkies and toured through the 1970s, opening for Willie Nelson's six-night run at The Troubadour in Los Angeles in 1974.

After the band dissolved in the early 1980s, Ware returned to Norman and formed the rock band The Sensational Shoes. He reunited with Hubbard in 1986 for tours across the United States and Europe.

Ware served as bandleader for the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Okemah for roughly 20 years. Festival organizers said in a statement after his death that without Ware, there would be no Woodyfest, calling that not hyperbole but a statement of fact.

In 2010, Blue Door owner Greg Johnson asked up-and-coming artist John Fullbright to hire Ware as a guitarist, beginning a seven-year partnership that carried them to the 2013 Grammy Awards and onto the stage of "The Late Show with David Letterman" in 2014. That stage sat in the same Ed Sullivan Theater where Ware had watched The Beatles perform 50 years earlier.

Ware released 12 solo albums between 2001 and 2024 and published his memoir, "Man with Guitar and Amp: A Sideman's Memoir," earlier this year. The Depot hosted a book signing on Thursday, June 18. The memoir traces his path from that 1964 lightning-bolt moment through cameos with Little Richard and Frank Zappa to the Letterman stage.

A 2024 short documentary, "Ware the Buffalo Roams," produced by Rose State College students, won Best Documentary Short Subject Music Film at the 2025 Bare Bones International Film Festival.

At home in Norman, Ware worked from a converted single-car garage he called "the Buffarama," decorated in Rat Fink cartoon memorabilia. During the COVID-19 lockdown, he used it to write instrumental guitar songs, rock and roll and surf music. He also helped build the tradition of featuring local artists at The Depot's Summer Breeze concert series.

His 70th birthday celebration in February 2020 drew more than 250 fans to a downtown Norman venue, with a "Who's Who" of Oklahoma musicians. The show ended with more than 30 guitarists performing Link Wray's "Rumble" together.

After Ware's cancer diagnosis in summer 2025, The Depot organized an outdoor tribute concert called "Buffapalooza" on the downtown Norman street outside the train station. Several hundred people attended; the show was live-streamed so Ware could watch from home.

Norman Mayor Stephen Tyler Holman said on social media that Ware "left a lasting impact not just through his music, but through the relationships he built along the way," according to the Norman Transcript. State Rep. Jared Deck, D-Norman, a musician Ware mentored, wrote on Facebook that Ware made every young musician feel like they belonged.

Norman singer-songwriter Gregg Standridge, who played in The Shambles with Ware, said Ware taught professionalism "not through lectures, but through the way he played, treated people and carried himself," according to NonDoc.

No memorial service details have been announced. The Depot said in a statement that Ware's legacy will live on through the kindness, love of music and mentorship he inspired in others.

Ware's memoir is available at terrybuffaloware.com.