When OffBeat first reported the passing of the “King of the Swamp Blues,” Ernest “Tabby” Thomas, on New Year’s Day 2014, it was a devastating loss to the Louisiana music community and to blues lovers around the world. Of course it affected Tabby’s family the most, some of whom have also gone on to become musicians in their on right. Yet, Thomas’ son Chris Thomas King, himself an established blues artist and actor, offered OffBeat his own personal memoir on his father to share as his eulogy. We share his letter with you here.

Memories of my beloved dad Ernest “Rocking Tabby” Thomas

by Chris Thomas King

Tabby, my dad, often told me stories of his strict up-bringing. As a child he regularly attended Sunday school and sung in the church choir, before getting bit by the blues bug in high school. Dad would tell me . . .

“I used to sing at church,” Dad said. “My grandfather founded a church and I used to sing in the junior choir there.” He told me, “My godfather’s sister had a son, he was a paraplegic, he used to shine shoes up at Tick Tock record shop, on 3rd Street. He walked on crutches, but he could sing. His name was Alphonse King. Man, could he sing! I was a little young guy shinning shoes and singing with him. So that’s how I was able to get my voice trained.”

Ernest "Tabby" Thomas (1929 - 2014)

Tabby’s first musical love was “jump blues.” He loved playing Mama Willie’s old 78s. She would scold and punish him for listing to, ‘that devil’s music.’ She’d left that music behind when she got saved, giving herself to Jesus.

From time to time my dad would be in a mood to reminisce. Usually, those stories were used to draw a distinction. To illustrate to me, a snotty nose kid, how good I seemed to have it.

“You should be more grateful by the mere fact that you have a father in the home.” He said to me on numerous occasions. He repeated the same stories so often I knew them by heart.

“I remember,” Dad said, “One time I was playing football for McKinley. The team was going somewhere on a bus to play. Before leaving I went back there ‘cause Mama had some whiskey and shit back there in a closet.” He reminisced. “I went and I took a drank of it. And I went eeh, ugh . . . Mama heard me.”

“T-Boo!”

That’s what Mama Willie called Dad, not Tabby, but T-Boo. He didn’t get the nickname Tabby until he was in the service.

“T-Boo, what you doing!” She said.

“I ain’t doing nothing, Mama.” He said, with a gruff whiskey burned voice.

“Yeah you is! What you doing?

Then she burst into the room. Catching him in the act!

“You messin’ round with that . . . you better get away from that whiskey!”

He said she took to whopping on him real good!

Unlike me, my dad was quite the athlete. He played football and boxed. Every once in a while I’d be with him when he bumped into one of his former teammates. They’d start reminiscing about those leather helmets days. He said, when he would get close to the goal line he’d call the quarterback sneak so he could score the touchdown! He reckoned if he scored the touchdown, he might really score later with the ladies. He told me once, if he had it to do all over again, however, he’d be a male cheerleader. He’d rather be on the sidelines, picking up the girls, tossing them around, and leading cheers instead of getting tackled. He would lament that as he’d gotten older, and tried to get out of bed in the mornings, he could feel every game hit he’d ever taken.

He would tell me about his formal introduction to the arts . . .

“During the time I was there at McKinley.” Dad said. “Louisiana State University brought a play over there, Shakespeare.” He said blissfully. “I had never seen nothing like that. And man, I saw that, and it just inspired me. All the guys was going to their little, sweet sixteen, they was talking to their girlfriend, in proper English, ‘No, darling, please, let me carry this. No, darling, I will do it for you.’ Man,” He laughed. “Everybody was gone! I just enjoyed the play. Then around 1947 they had a recording artist come. His name was Roy Brown. He had a hot record out called “Good Rockin’ Tonight.” I had never seen no band, until he came up from New Orleans and played at McKinley with his band. There was something about what he did, I just loved it. And it stayed in the back of my mind.” Dad said affectionately.

Roy Brown made quite an impression on my dad. By the second half of the 1940s, jump blues had become the dominant form of black popular music. Roy Brown’s 1947 recording of “Good Rockin’ Tonight” was later covered by Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Buddy Holly, and Pat Boone. It’s perhaps one of the most important songs in the development of early rock & roll. My dad was inspired to give this energetic style of music a try, even though he had no idea where to begin.

After graduating from McKinley High School my father unenthusiastically studied theology, with the full encouragement of Mama Willie and Poppa Gus. For a short time he attended the now defunct, Leland University, which was founded in 1870 as an institution of higher learning for people of color in Louisiana. Leland’s aims were to prepare ministers for the work of preaching the gospel, along with other practical trades. One of the first private universities for blacks in America, Leland University was seeking to advance Christianity and morality. Theology was a career path that would have made his mother and stepfather proud, but my dad had caught the music bug, and wanted to sing the blues. The time had come when young Tabby, would have to choose between his love of secular music and the church.

My Dad had three siblings on his stepfather’s side from a previous marriage. He had little or no contact with them. Poppa Gus and Mama Willie had two sons of their own. Gus Washington Jr., born in 1945 and Donald Washington, the youngest born in 1947. Dad was several years older than Gus and Donald but they were very close. Mama Willie and Poppa Gus also took in a little girl, Woody Ann, whom they later adopted. They all grew to be a close nit family except there was tension between the young blues singer and his religious parents.

Gus Washington, Jr.,—we call him Uncle Junior—followed in his grandfather’s footsteps by becoming a preacher. Uncle Junior is not a musician, but he’s a talented Baptist preacher with the voice and cadence of a bluesman. My dad possessed the talent it takes to become a preacher, too. Tabby has the voice of a deacon. He sermonizes in between songs like a preacher. Some of the furthermost bluesmen were preachers at one time or other. Usually this duality created a dramatic effect in their sermons and songs. They were usually tormented souls who had one foot in the blues and one in the church. But these two brothers made peace with their dissimilar callings and never looked back.

Dad had a girlfriend his senior year in school named Lucile Allen. She became pregnant and Dad wasn’t ready to marry her and settle down causing tension between him and his morally rigid family. Dad was urged by his mother to move to Detroit to stay with his Aunt Laura. When Tabby moved to Detroit, like many southern blacks before him, he believed he was heading to a promised land. Conversely, a few years before he left home the city raged with violence due to its newly exploding black population. In 1942 World War II and the booming Ford Motor Company created numerous manufacturing employment opportunities for blacks. The availability of good factory jobs stimulated black migration to the North by the thousands. By 1949 more than one-third of Detroit’s municipal workers were black. Recruiters would tour the South convincing blacks, and some whites, to head north with promises of higher wages in newly opened car factories. Blacks arrived in such numbers that it was impossible to house them all. Southern whites brought their own traditional prejudices with them as both races migrated northward. They soon found a northern bigotry every bit as pervasive and malevolent as what they left behind in Louisiana. Whites grew resentful working next to blacks, causing many stoppages and slowdowns until the city eventually boiled over into a deadly race riot in the summer of 1943.

Detroit was still reeling when my dad arrived around 1949. He moved in with his Aunt Laura who lived in the Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects, the largest residential housing project owned by the City of Detroit, located in the Midtown-University section on the East Side of Detroit, Michigan near the Chrysler Freeway, Vernor Highway and St. Antoine Street. The housing project was named after Frederick Douglass, the African American abolitionist and author. The tenement would become home for such eventual Motown stars as Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard during their early years.

Dad had trouble finding work and he was lonesome for home. Regardless, he didn’t want to return home on a bus, only carrying the tattered satchel he’d left home with. He was too prideful to return to Louisiana empty handed. He wanted to arrive with a sense of accomplishment, or at least, in a nice Detroit automobile.

He’d go down to Hastings Street to marvel at all the cars. There were cars and trucks for miles, as far as he could see. He was desirous of buying a new car and driving home to Louisiana in style. Except, his options were limited. Dad was unemployed, idle and broke.

He began to frequent the Brewster Center gym working out and sparing with amateur boxers, who were in an organized league, for pocket change. A trainer saw him sparing and saw some potential in him. The trainer asked if he wanted to join the boxing team. Dad began training earnestly to become an amateur boxer. There was an upcoming boxing match arranged and they wanted Dad to go. “I enjoyed going down there and working out with the guys. But in the end, I decided I wasn’t gon’ mess with that.” Dad told me.

Tabby started hanging around the blues clubs and saloons on Hastings Street, the heart of Detroit’s Eastside black entertainment district. Bluesman John Lee Hooker was part of an emergent blues scene on Hastings. Hooker was a popular post-war blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter from Mississippi. His stepfather, a blues guitarist, in Shreveport, Louisiana, influenced him to play an opened tuned, one-chord blues, which didn’t use the typical I, IV, V chord progression. Hooker’s music was built on one chord. He would play an entire song using only the E chord. However, my dad was more enchanted with the flashy jump blues singers. Dad hung around but didn’t know how to begin to put a band together. He had very little knowledge of the music business.

One day Dad saw a billboard near the projects, which said, ‘Join the Air Force.’ The Air Force had only recently become a special unit separate from the Army. On July 26, 1948, President Truman had issued an executive order abolishing segregation in the armed forces and ordered full integration of all the services. Tabby suddenly realized he had the option of joining the Air Force.

Dad decided to go down to the recruiting station to see what the Air Force was all about. Tabby, an athletic twenty year-old, had no problem passing the physical. They signed him up and sent him to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas to begin basic training. Dad sent his mother, a seventy-dollar allotment each month to help out back home. After months of basic training he was shipped overseas to Guam. Tabby had entered the service during peacetime. He didn’t see any combat except in the boxing ring. He boxed as an amateur while in the service and participated in various other sports. He served a few years in Guam before returning to the United States to March Air Force Base in Riverside, California. When his obligations to the military were fulfilled he was encouraged by his superiors to re-enlist and make a career of it, but Dad opted to forgo a military career, becoming a civilian again.

When Dad got out of the Air Force, he moved to San Francisco. He took a job at a shoe store. “I had a little job at a shoe store called Wrigley Shoe’s on Market Street.” He told me. “I’d go down there and wash the windows, vacuum the floor, stock the new shoes on racks.” He said.

He bought a used car and rented a small room. In San Francisco, he was on his own for the first time without any rigid supervision. Sometimes, he and his buddies would get together for beach parties. They’d sing, drink wine, and flirt with girls, just having an all around fun time. They knew my dad had a good voice so they egged him on to sing along with songs they heard on the radio. This helped them attract female admirers. It also helped my dad gain confidence in his vocal abilities. One night at a bowling alley, a guy told him, “Tabby, there’s going to be a big talent show!” He said. “Why don’t you go over there, man, and try out?”

That Sunday morning, around 10:30 a.m. he went to an audition for the big talent show to be held that Monday night. Dad is there along with several contestants checking everything out, when he recognize the voice of the guy who was judging the tryouts. It was a popular disc jockey from KSAN AM radio station. KSAM, were pioneers in broadcasting to the black community in the Bay Area.

The Disc Jockey was sitting at a table with the shows’ producer and the band director. Dad was hesitant, aloof, hanging around in the background checking out the other contestants, measuring their abilities to his. The Jockey was hostile and arrogant, cutting the contestants off before they finished their songs if he didn’t like what he heard. Tabby was contemplating whether or not he should go through with the audition or leave, saving himself the humiliation of rejection.

“Hey, what you want?” The Jockey asked Dad impatiently.

“I just came by to see about this talent show.” Dad nervously answered

“You sing?”

“Well, uh, I try to.”

“Come on over here, let me see what you can do.” The Jockey said doubtfully, his eyes following Tabby restlessly as he walks over and stands in front of the panel. Tabby hesitates. He stares nervously at the Disc Jockey.

“Well, don’t just stand there, boy, sing something.” He demanded.

Dad closes his eyes and sings, Roy Brown’s ballad “Long About Midnight” with fervor and conviction. Dad finishes the song and opens eyes.

“You’re on the show tomorrow night.” The Jockey said with an approving smile.

The big talent show was held at the Opera House. An aged building with winged balconies, and red velvet seats. Lot’s of celebrities were there, even Red Skelton, the comedian. Every seat was filled with anticipation. Etta James, an angel voiced, mulatto teen, was on the show. Etta was chaperoned by her mother backstage. Each time Dad would recount this seminal event to me, he would always speak fondly of Etta. “Etta James was a beautiful young lady.” Dad would often say. “She was around sixteen, seventeen, and her mom saw us talking and said, ‘Etta, you come on back over here, stop talking to that boy!’” Dad said he and Etta began an admiration of each other’s singing abilities that night, and a friendship, that lasted for years.

Another participant was Johnny Mathis, a handsomely dressed classically trained vocalist. Johnny Mathis sang with perfect diction and precise phasing, people clapped for him so enthusiastically after he finished his song, that it made Dad feel a little nervous backstage, just knowing he’d have to come up behind the suave singer. The Emcee called young Tabby out on stage and Dad sang “Long About Midnight,” with the same fervor and conviction he’d shown in the audition, but there was an added depth to his singing which gave his baritone vibrato a spiritual sensibility—harkening back to the soulful voices of his parents’ church. He sang with just the right balance of joy and heartache to touch the audiences’ emotions. They clapped for him just as much as they did for Johnny Mathis!

“Looks like we got a tie!” The Emcee said.

The adulation felt good to young Tabby. It inspired him. Dad and Johnny were invited to stand center stage with the Emcee.

“I’m going to put my hand over each one of them!” The Emcee announced to the jubilant crowd. “And when I do, applaud for the winner!” He said excitedly.

He put his hand over Johnny. The audience clapped and cheered loudly.

“Well, I guess he’s going to win it.” Dad whispered to himself.

The Emcee put his hand over young Tabby. The audience stomped and clapped even louder! Dad won first prize, fifteen dollars! Dad and his friends went out and bought wine with the prize money. Dad was now smitten with show business. Dad was ready to make a serious move into show business. Johnny Mathis went on to become a major success as a crooner for Columbia Records. Etta James went on to have major success recording for Chicago’s Chess Records.

Dad heard about “J&M” a recording studio. It happened to be right around the corner from his job near the St. Francis Drake Hotel on Geary Street. One day on his lunch hour, he went around to J&M to see if he could make a record.

The studio was up a narrow flight of stairs. Tabby reached the top of the stairs and entered the office.

“Can I help you?” The Secretary asked.

“I just come up here to look.” Dad said, glancing over her shoulder into a big glass window.

The Secretary allowed him to take a closer look. His eyes popped as he wondered into the studio checking out the gold records hanging on the walls along with glossy publicity photos of the artists that recorded them. He notices a buttoned-up professional engineer, behind a mixing desk, in a smoky adjacent room. In the main room he marvels at instruments, microphones, cables and wires strategically placed to capture the musicians as they busily recorded a song. A big red light on the wall is flashing, indicating the band is in the middle of a recording session. Dad has never seen anything like it. He walks up to the big glass window to get a closer look. The drummer, recognizing Tabby gazing in, stops the music. He whispers something to the older gentleman producing the session, Ollie Hunt, while pointing Tabby out to him. The producer, Ollie Hunt, is a well-known veteran record producer. Ollie approaches Tabby, opening the door to the recording room.

“So,” Ollie said, “They tell me you sing.”

“Yes sir.” Dad said.

“Come on in here.”

“Crow,” Ollie said to the piano player. “Write something for him.”

Crow wrote some lyrics and put them on the music stand for Tabby. The engineer set up a large ribbon microphone, perfectly adjusting it to capture Dad’s voice.

“Sing, sing them words here.” Ollie said.

“Midnight is calling, and I don’t know what to do.” Dad sang with great feeling.

“Let’s cut it!” Ollie yelled excitedly!

Dad cut the record on his lunch hour. “Midnight Is Calling,” was released on Hollywood Records out of Los Angeles.

“Man, when my record come out, it was all over Frisco, every jukebox had it. So that’s how I got to making records.” Dad told me.

Dad went down to Los Angeles to promote the record. He made a stop at a popular record shop, Dolphins of Hollywood, on East Vernon Ave, near the corner of Central Avenue. Dolphins of Hollywood, was a happening. Dolphin’s was a gathering spot for teen hipsters, scene makers and music fanatics. It featured a Disc Jockey broadcasting inside the store, live, over local station KRKD. The store attracted mobs of kids for record signings by their favorite artists. On the day Dad arrived, shining shoes in the record shop, was a tough husky girl named Willie Mae Thornton. Willie Mae was an aspiring singer who eventually had a hit with “Hound Dog,” under the pseudonym “Big Mama” Thornton.

John Dolphin the owner, also owned the label Hollywood Records, in which, Dad was signed to. Dad did radio promotion with the Disc Jockey and autograph signings for fans. He played some small promotional gigs in South Central before returning to San Francisco. He’d quit his shoe store job to promote his debut record. Tabby’s song however, wasn’t popular enough to sustain him as a full time singer. He was feeling a little homesick and decided to return to Louisiana while deciding his next move.

Tabby told John Dolphin he was going back to Louisiana, and John told him, ‘When you get to New Orleans, go by the radio station and see a guy down there by the name of Okey Dokey.” Tabby bought a one-way train ticket on the Sunset Limited and returned to Louisiana.

When Dad got off the train one morning around 6:30 a.m. in New Orleans, he taxied straight to WBOK radio to meet the disc jockey Okey Dokey. People in Baton Rouge would listen to WBOK broadcasting from New Orleans because there wasn’t a black oriented radio station or disc jockey in Baton Rouge. Dad said to Okey Dokey, “John Dolphin told me to come by and see you.” Okey Dokey greeted him and played his record on the air. He interviewed Dad and his voice went out over the airwaves to all of South Louisiana reaching as far as Baton Rouge.

A lady friend of Tabby’s mother was listening and called her, alerting Mama Willie that her boy was in New Orleans and on his way home.

“Mama hadn’t seen me for three or four years.” Dad told me. “And man, when I rolled up in front of my house in a taxi, she come out there hollering and screaming. Saw my mama hollering and crying, she didn’t know what had happened.”

Dad had his hair processed, looking just like the handsomely polished recording artist on his Hollywood Records promotional photos that appeared in local papers. Lot’s of family and friends had gathered to welcome the Air Force veteran and recording star home. Dad had a box of records with him and he gave each one a copy. His mom eased her churchly ways for a night, allowing Dad’s new record to be played in the house, over and over and over again.

In Louisiana it was a big deal to have a record out, especially one recorded in California. He was soon booked for an extended engagement at the Dew Drop Inn, located at 2836 LaSalle Street in uptown in New Orleans.  All the top artists played the Dew Drop Inn, Sam Cooke, Guitar Slim, Ray Charles, everybody, it was one of the most prestigious rhythm and blues clubs around.

The Dew Drop had a flamboyant female impersonator emcee that would bring the entertainers on. The outrageous Patsy Vadalia was her name. On Tabby’s first booking into the club Patsy brought him on out of the clouds. He knew he’d have to live up to the lofty expectations that she built for him with the audience. He came out doing his thing. He was singing, his new recording along with some jump blues numbers and a few standards such as “Body and Soul,” and “September in the Rain.”

 

“I never will forget.” Dad told me. “They had an older guy, he was sitting over there in a chair listening and watching.” Dad said. “When I finished with my set, I come off the stage and went over to the bar, he came and said, ‘Hey, that was a nice set you did.’ I said thank you.” Dad continued excitedly. “I was clean you know, had on a new suit and my hair laid down, I appreciated what the old fellow said. I went over and sat down at a table and a guy next me, another singer, said, ‘That guy you were talking to, that’s Louis Armstrong.’”

Dad and the singer began bonding and the singer introduced himself as Johnny Adams. Johnny was one of New Orleans’ best up and coming young singers.

“Man, where you from?” Johnny asked.

“Baton Rouge.” Dad said,

“Man, they do that up there in Baton Rouge where you at?”

“Yeah, man, they do.” Dad assured him.

“Well man, I’d sure like to go up there one day.”

“After they pay me tonight, if you want to go, I’ll take you.” Dad said, before going on stage for another set.

Louis Armstrong made a call setting dad up with a booking agent, Eric Shaw. Eric Shaw agency started booking Dad all over Texas and Arkansas. Louis Armstrong just happened to be in New Orleans while Tabby had a regular engagement at the Doo Drop Inn. Dad always told me Louis Armstrong was his all time favorite trumpet player.

Used by permission, CTK TOURS, LLC

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To view Tabby Thomas’ obituary as printed in the February 2014 issue of OffBeat Magazine, click here.