Message Board Archive: Thread Number 131

Now, while I have my little bunch of favorites, I do confess
to a certain restless spirit when it comes to this music. I'm
continually intrigued by guys who might be considered "lesser
lights". One of those lights I'd like to draw a little
attention to - Ramblin' Thomas.
I first ran across his music on an old Biograph LP. The sound
was horrible - in some cases, it seemed that the guys doing
the transfer from 78 couldn't even nail down the right speed
(they got it *way* too fast) but songs like Hard Dallas
Blues, Jig Head Blues, Poor Boy Blues, Sawmill Moan and No
Baby Blues shone through the inadequacies of Biograph's
presentation.
His sound is idiosyncratic in many ways - his timing can be
erratic (although this is true of many street singers). In
some ways he reminds me of a strange cross between a low-down
Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson. His tunes are
"crooked" and he follows his vocal lines with elaborate
single note lines. While he may not be as technically
polished as LJ, he certainly shows a lot of inventiveness and
spontaneity in his playing - not to mention some patent
weirdness! Lock and Key Blues is a perfect example of the
particular aspect... it's got perhaps one of the weirdest
breaks I've ever heard in a blues piece.
He's one of the only guys I've heard who actually seems to
have tried to imitate something of Lemon's vocal approach.
While he lacks the range that Lemon had (which is pretty
incredible), he does seem to mimic Lemon's vocal phrasing
patterns in many cases. I'm no ethnomusicologist, so I'll not
indulge in any beat-counting. Suffice it to say that you can
pick up a copy of:
Ramblin' Thomas and the Dallas Blues Singers Document DOCD-5107
and form your own opinions. Plus, you'll get to hear Jesse
Babyface Thomas, Sammy Hill and Otis Harris. Texas
wonderfulness all around.
Listen, listen, listen.
Frank
ps: It'd be real nice to see some more RT songs show up on a
couple Yazoo comps... While this happens to be a CD where
Document seems to do an OK job of transferring the original
78s (certainly better than Biograph!), there's no doubt in my
mind that Richard Nevins and Yazoo can do it better!