Henry Thomas

b. 1874 in Big Sandy, TX, d. c.1930. One of the oldest black folk artists to record during the 20s, Thomas' highly individual repertoire of rags, breakdowns, church songs and ballads is of considerable importance to musicologists seeking to document the milieu from which the blues developed. Born to ex-slaves on a sharecropping farm in east Texas, Thomas was more than 50 when he first recorded in Chicago in July 1927. Thus, the songs from that and two other 1927 sessions, and single sessions in 1928 and 1929, were already some decades out of date. Although seven of his 23 issued sides were labelled 'blues', very few conformed to any of the established metrical patterns. His nickname of 'Ragtime Texas' defined more nearly the nature of his music than it did his penchant for constant travelling. He sometimes supplemented his loud voice with Pan-pipes, though his technique was far more rudimentary than that of men such as Sid Hemphill, who recorded for the Library of Congress in 1942. One of his most noted songs was 'Railroadin' Some', in which he detailed the stops on several Texas and Louisiana railway lines. 'Don't Ease Me In' and 'Don't Leave Me Here' were both variants on 'Alabama Bound'. His 'Bull Doze Blues' was the basis for Canned Heat's 1969 hit, 'Goin' Up The Country'.

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By Barry Lee Pearson
Texas songster Henry Thomas remains a relative stranger who made some great recordings, then returned to obscurity. Evidence suggests he was an itinerant street musician, a musical hobo who rode the rails across Texas and possibly to the World's Fairs in St. Louis and Chicago just before and after the turn of the century. Most agree he was the oldest African-American folk artist to produce a significant body of recordings. His projected 1874 birth date would predate Charley Patton by a good 17 years. Like Patton and a handful of other musicians generally termed songsters (including John Hurt, Jim Jackson, Mance Lipscomb, Furry Lewis, and Leadbelly), Thomas' repertoire bridged the 19th and 20th centuries, providing a compelling glimpse into a wide range of African-American musical genres. The 23 songs he cut for Vocalion between 1927 and 1929 include a spiritual, ballads, reels, dance songs, and eight selections titled blues. Obviously dance music, his songs were geared to older dance styles shared by black and white audiences. Thomas' sound, like his repertoire, is unique. He capoed his guitar high up the neck and strummed it in the manner of a banjo, favoring dance rhythm over complex fingerwork. On many of his pieces, he simultaneously played the quills or panpipes, a common but seldom-recorded African-American folk instrument indigenous to Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Combining the quills, a limited-range melody instrument, with his banjo-like strummed guitar produced one of the most memorable sounds in American folk music. For example, his lead-in on "Bull Doze Blues" still worked as a hook when recycled 40 years later by blues-rockers Canned Heat in their version of "Going Up the Country." "Ragtime Texas," as Thomas was known, provides a welcome inroad to 19th century dance music, but his music is neither obscure nor merely educational: it has a timeless quality -- and while it may be an acquired taste, once you catch on to it, you're hooked.