Leon Thomas -

Leon Thomas (Oct. 4, 1937 — May 8, 1999) was an American jazz, blues, and soul vocalist, percussionist, and songwriter who sang with Count Basie in the early 1960s and reemerged through collaborations with Pharoah Sanders, including “The Creator Has a Master Plan” on Karma. His solo career on Flying Dutchman produced Spirits Known and Unknown, The Leon Thomas Album, and Blues and the Soulful Truth, records marked by scat singing, blues forms, percussion, and the ululating technique Thomas called the soularphone.

Background

Leon Thomas was born Amos Leon Thomas Jr. on Oct. 4, 1937, in East St. Louis, Illinois. His parents sang in church choirs and kept records by blues singers Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake in the family home. A younger brother introduced Thomas to a Dizzy Gillespie record featuring singer Joe Carroll, whose scat phrasing became an early reference. Thomas attended Lincoln High School and sang with local choirs.

Thomas first joined a club bandstand in tenth grade, when percussionist Armando Peraza let him sit in on congas and bongos. Club musicians invited Thomas back as a singer alongside saxophonist Jimmy Forrest and guitarist Grant Green. Disc jockey Spider Burke heard the appearance and placed Thomas on a weekly radio program. By age sixteen, Thomas held a regular club engagement and placed third in a St. Louis metropolitan singing competition. Thomas also heard John Coltrane with Miles Davis at Peacock Alley, and Coltrane gave him a reference for rapid scat phrasing.

After Lincoln High, Thomas entered Tennessee State University in Nashville on a drama-and-music scholarship. He spent much of his second year on regional dates with a campus group that included saxophonist Hank Crawford. The group broke up after Crawford joined Ray Charles, and Thomas took an engagement at New Era club in Nashville.

Thomas reached Manhattan around September 1958 on a lead supplied by singer Faye Adams. RCA Victor recorded a Thomas album in early October and shelved the completed master. Thomas then spent several months seeking work through Shaw Booking Agency, which placed him at Apollo Theater for a one-week engagement after singer Austin Cromer left the bill with illness. Trombonist-arranger Melba Liston helped Thomas prepare charts for the Apollo engagement. Art Blakey invited Thomas onto a quintet tour after the Apollo run.

Thomas returned to Nashville in 1960 and took another club engagement near Tennessee State. Count Basie heard Thomas at the club after a local dance and offered him a future place in the orchestra as successor to singer Joe Williams. Basie first booked Thomas on weekends at a Harlem club, while Thomas worked weekdays at Café Wha? with pianist Jaki Byard, bassist Richard Davis, and tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin.

Thomas joined the Count Basie Orchestra in January 1961. The U.S. Army drafted Thomas one month into the Basie engagement and discharged him after roughly six months of service. Thomas resumed club work and rejoined Basie in 1963 for roughly two years as orchestra vocalist.

Thomas worked with musicians at the Dom in the East Village after Basie, then spent four months in 1967 with the Underground Musicians and Artists Association in Los Angeles. Pianist Horace Tapscott founded the association as a community organization for Black musicians and artists. The Los Angeles period coincided with development of the ululating scat and yodel technique that Thomas later called the soularphone.

Pharoah Sanders heard Thomas in a club in 1968 and recruited him for his group. Thomas co-wrote “The Creator Has a Master Plan” with Sanders and recorded vocals and percussion for the piece on Feb. 14, 1969, at RCA Studios in New York for Karma. Bob Thiele produced Karma and, later in 1969, signed Thomas to Flying Dutchman for the debut solo album Spirits Known and Unknown.

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