Tab Thomas - Respect

[Guest gaz thomas]

Tabby Thomas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 

Tabby Thomas Birth name Ernest Joseph Thomas Born January 5, 1929
Baton Rouge, Louisiana Died January 1, 2014 (aged 84)
Baton Rouge, Louisiana Genres blues, swamp blues Instruments piano, guitar, vocals Years active before 1960s—2013 Labels Excello Records

Ernest Joseph "Tabby" Thomas, (January 5, 1929 — January 1, 2014), also known as Rockin' Tabby Thomas, was an Americanblues musician.^[1] He sang and played the piano and guitar, and specialized in a substyle of blues indigenous to southern Louisiana called swamp blues.^[2]

Life and career[edit]

Thomas was born and grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. After graduating he served in the U.S. Air Force, and while serving won a talent contest on KSAN radio in San Francisco in 1959. After making a few unsuccessful recordings for Hollywood Records,^[3] he returned to Baton Rouge. He recorded for several small local labels, before he became more successful with Excello Records inCrowley, for whom his records included "Hoodo Party" in 1961.^[4] He also worked in various jobs, including a time with Ciba Geigywhere he was a union steward.^[2]

He became one of the best known blues musicians in Baton Rouge with his band the Mellow, Mellow Men, but briefly retired from performing in the late 1960s to set up his own record label, Blue Beat, which released his own recordings and those of other local musicians.^[3] In 1978, with other members of his family including his son Chris Thomas King,^[5] he reopened a rundown building on North Boulevard. He ran the venue as an authentic blues club, Tabby's Blues Box and Heritage Hall. The club moved in 2000 and finally closed in November 2004. Thomas also became a popular performer in the UK and Europe, where he made regular appearances.^[2]

Thomas had a serious automobile accident in 2002 and a stroke in 2004, which affected his playing but not his singing. He later hosted the radio show, Tabby's Blues Box, on Baton Rouge stations WBRH-FM and KBRH-AM. He died in the early hours of January 1, 2014.^[2]

 

 

^{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR60WFjRQyQ}

 

[Guest gaz thomas]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpKkSCQJxDY

 

 

 

 

A couple of top R&B dancers here !

He was 84 years old and still at it !

Crashing cars in his 70s !!!

I imagine the film will be good? 

 

I will be playing these 45s for another 84 years !

Just total class !

a couple of ob posted for nothing but respect

 

Rip Tabs

Edited February 5, 2014 by gaz thomas

[Guest gaz thomas]

Blues legend 'Rockin' Tabby' Thomas dies

BY JOHN WIRT

jwirt@theadvocate.com

January 05, 2014

0 COMMENTS

Ernest “Rockin’ Tabby” Thomas, a swamp-blues performer, recording artist and founder of what for decades was the home of the blues in Baton Rouge, Tabby’s Blues Box and Heritage Hall, died before dawn Wednesday morning, days before his 85th birthday.

Thomas operated Tabby’s Blues Box for 24 years, first at its original location on North Boulevard and, for the club’s final four years, downtown on Lafayette Street.

The Blues Box closed in November 2004 after Thomas suffered a stroke.

The father of Grammy-winning singer-guitarist and actor Chris Thomas King, Thomas largely retired from performing after the stroke paralyzed his left side and prevented him from playing guitar. A bout with cancer followed.

“Even when my dad was most ill,” King said Wednesday, “he still found a way to say something to put a smile on people’s faces. His legacy is that he touched people with his music and his conversation.”

King saw his father Tuesday afternoon at the Heritage Manor nursing home and rehabilitation center, where Thomas had been a resident for nearly two years.

“I just sat by his bed and sang some songs to him,” King said. “I didn’t know I was saying goodbye.”

King also noted his father’s stubbornness, albeit stubbornness for a good cause.

“People who knew my dad well knew that he could be a little bit ornery,” King said. “His stubbornness was that he loved his music. He was a champion for Louisiana’s blues music during times when a lot of people turned away from it. He carried it on and passed it on.”

Tabby’s Blues Box served as a performance venue for Thomas and swamp-blues peers Silas Hogan, Arthur Lee “Guitar” Kelley, Raful Neal, Whispering Smith and Henry Gray.

“All those guys, they didn’t have anywhere to play,” Thomas told The Advocate in 1999. “They played little cafés. People didn’t pay to go see them, didn’t care nothing about them. But those guys had records out all over the world. They didn’t get the money for the records they made, but they kept the blues alive, plus they ignited the people overseas to know about Baton Rouge.”

The Blues Box also became an informal blues school for aspiring young performers such as Houma’s Tab Benoit and Baton Rouge’s Kenny Neal and Larry Garner.

In addition to being a club owner, Thomas made many recordings. He was among the Louisiana blues artists who recorded at J.D. Miller’s studio in Crowley, a regional hot spot where Slim Harpo, Lazy Lester, Lightnin’ Slim and Katie Webster cut their future classics.

 

The best-known Thomas recordings include “Hoodoo Party” and “Popeye Train,” both released by Excello Records in Nashville.

In the 1990s, Thomas’ fibrous bluesman voice, expansive personality and storytelling were on full display during his blues-centric Saturday afternoon radio show on WBRH-FM.

A Baton Rouge native, Thomas’ public singing began in the choir of the church his grandfather founded, St. Luke Baptist Church. Later at McKinley High School, he won a talent show by telling jokes. He also appeared in a school play, “A Womanless Wedding.”

The play, Thomas said in 1997, “that’s one of the things that started me in show business. I can dance and sing and joke, do all kind of stuff. They say ‘blues singer,’ but I do stuff like ‘Danny Boy.’ But blues is my forte, that’s how I make my living.”

A performance by Roy Brown and the Mighty Men inspired Thomas when he was a teen.

“When I heard him sing and play, I knew right then that’s what I wanted to be, a blues singer,” Thomas said.

Musical ambitions had to wait until Thomas finished a stint in the U.S. Army. After being discharged, he won a talent show in San Francisco by singing Roy Brown’s “Along About Midnight.” His competition included future stars Etta James and Johnny Mathis. Hollywood Records in Los Angeles subsequently issued Thomas’ recording debut, “Midnight Is Calling.”

Thomas returned to Baton Rouge in 1953. For many years he supported his late wife, Jocelyn, and their seven children by working at a chemical plant by day and performing at night.

“I’m glad that I took care of my family and that my kids know me,” he said. “I’m glad I didn’t do that (touring). I’d rather stayed there and watched them and given them a fatherly security when they were young.”

Thomas opened Tabby’s Blues Box and Heritage Hall in 1980. Blues fans from throughout the world visited the raw, genuine blues club. Other, much better-financed venues followed the Blues Box’s lead, including Buddy Guy’s Legends in Chicago and the House of Blues and B.B. King’s Blues Club chains.

“I was just chosen for this thing, the Blues Box,” Thomas said in 1997. “I’m not on no ego trip, I’m just out here hustling, trying to take care of business.”

King and the Thomas family are working with the Baton Rouge Blues Foundation to erect a historical marker at the downtown location of Tabby’s Blues Box. The family hopes the marker will be the first of many Louisiana music markers to come.

Services for Thomas are planned for Tuesday, the location to be announced

[Guest gaz thomas]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieDdhTu6lOY

 

My friend "Rockin" Tabby Thomas, who has died aged 84, was one of the last surviving Louisiana blues greats who recorded for the legendary Excello record label. He was a guitarist, pianist, singer, club owner and DJ whose 1961 recording, Hoodoo Party, was a greasy slice of swamp pop, and kicked off a long career in which he pursued a love of blues with evangelical intensity.

In 1979, in a rundown building on North Boulevard, Baton Rouge, Tabby opened the Blues Box, a club that became a much-needed haunt and platform for older bluesmen such as Silas Hogan and Arthur "Guitar" Kelly. It was there in 1987 that we first met, and it is indicative of his warm, generous nature that hardly had I stepped inside than he insisted on hearing me play; it was the beginning of a long and cherished friendship.

Together we worked on his critically acclaimed album King of the Swamp Blues (1988), and two years later Tabby came to Europe for the first of many tours and appearances at major festivals with my band.

Influenced as much by the smooth vocal style of Roy Brown and Lowell Fulson, as by the deep swampy blues of contemporaries such as Slim Harpo, Tabby happily switched between slow ballads and uptempo rocking numbers, the latter serving as a vehicle for his steely guitar playing. Self taught on both piano and guitar — his first piano was a length of cardboard with the keys marked out — Tabby heard his first music on his mother's Victrola record player and at his father's Baptist church in their hometown, Baton Rouge.

Tabby was always searching for the next elusive hit record, and his recording career encompassed most styles of southern soul and rhythm and blues, songs such as Big Leg Woman displaying a wry sense of humour. In later years he received some long-overdue recognition, becoming a regular performer at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival, where I last performed with him and his son Chris Thomas King in 2009.

Tabby was one of the most resilient characters I have ever met. Never bowed down by the bad times and occasional bum gigs, to the end Tabby lived for his music and family.

Tabby was predeceased by his wife, Jocelyn, and a daughter. He is survived by five daughters and two sons, and 20 grandchildren. He always said: "Bluesmen are like giant redwoods, they can quickly be chopped down but take a long time to grow." In Tabby's case it was certainly true.

 

 

 

ob - julian piper

Edited February 5, 2014 by gaz thomas