From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Wed Jun 19, 2002  7:32 pm
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Kid Thomas
 
KID THOMAS (aka Tommy Louis aka Tommy Lewis)

Born Louis Thomas Watts, 20 June 1934, Sturgis, Mississippi
Died 5 April 1970, Beverly Hills, California

Kid Thomas was and is one of the great unsung heroes of that crazy kind
of music that skirts the fine line between blues and straight-out rock & roll.
Though success constantly eluded him throughout his career, it wasn't for
lack of talent. With a powerful voice that could emit banshee wails and Little
Richard howls with consummate ease, and a harmonica style that, at his
best ("Rockin This Joint Tonight"), sounded like Little Walter powered by
a vacuum cleaner, Kid Thomas was a man who knew how to rock the joint,
indeed.
Born in Mississippi, he moved to Chicago in 1941. By the time young Louis
reached street-wise, teenage manhood, he was taking harmonica lessons
from Little Willie Smith, one of the many peripheral bluesmen on the Chicago
scene, in exchange for giving Smith lessons on the drums, the Kid's original
instrument.
The late '40s and early '50s found him semi-gainfully employed blowing harp
at Cadillac Babys and a dozen other clubs whose names are now lost to the
mists of time. According to all accounts, he appears to have sat in with
everybody at one time or another during the early to mid-'50s; Muddy Waters,
Elmore James, and Bo Diddley all welcomed him onstage on a regular basis,
while Thomas found himself even deputizing for his harmonica hero Little
Walter on the not-so-odd occasion when said hero was too drunk to make it up
to the bandstand.
By 1955, Kid Thomas decided he needed to make a record to help promote his
club appearances. Walking by the King-Federal distributors one day, he
simply poked his head and announced that he'd like to record. As luck would
have it, he was immediately introduced to Ralph Bass, then working for Sid
Nathan's label conglomerate as an A&R man. Bass listened to Thomas' spiel,
then sent him off with instructions to put a band together and come back for
a demo session. Deputizing Smith on drums, a guitarist only remembered as
James, and an unknown piano man, our hero headed back for the audition
loaded down with tunes he had been working up on his gigs. In his only known
interview, conducted in 1969 by Darryl Stolper, Thomas remembered that first
session that led to his first record being issued: "The first few numbers
didn't go over, so I started thinking about the (Howlin) Wolf, and I came up
with 'Wolf Pack'. And 'The Spell' I got from Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Both of
them were thought up on the spur of the moment, and Ralph Bass dug them."
Rather than have Thomas come back in and do a formal session, Bass was
so taken with the results of the Kid's ad-lib compositions, that the results
were duly pressed up as Federal single 12298.
After several months of pounding the pavement trying to promote the single,
Thomas came to face the cold, hard reality that having a record out and
having a hit record out are two very different things. In 1956, after crowning
his
head with a pompadour processed hair-do that reached higher than most
buildings in the city, the Kid was soon cashing in on the newly emerging
rock 'n' roll craze as an aces-up Little Richard impersonator.
Thomas drifted about for the next three or four years, working the low-end
of the Chicago club circuit, ocassionally landing a double booking with
Magic Sam or Otis Rush. With no further recording prospects on hand, our
hero headed out West, working a couple of clubs in Wichita again until 1958,
when he pulled up stakes to Denver, Colorado, before finally settling in Los
Angeles, California sometime in late '58 or the first part of 1959.

By the next year, Thomas hooked up with legendary record man George Mottola.
Mottola, one of the great unsung heroes of the early days of rock' n' roll, was
still working his regular gig as A&R man for Modern Records, producing acts
like Jesse Belvin and writing hits like "Goodnight, My Love." But the Kid's
powerhouse act apparently bowled him over. Studio time was duly booked, and
Thomas, backed by a two guitars-drums-no bass combo, recorded the first
version of the eerie slow blues howler "You Are An Angel," and what remains
his finest moment, the utterly berserk "Rockin' This Joint Tonight." When
Mottola became too busy to do anything with the record, he pointed the Kid
in the direction of one Brad Atwood, who promptly took one-half writers
credit and issued it on his TRC-Transcontinental label. But just as Thomas
was all set to do some television appearances and start promoting the
record, Atwood got into some unspecified problems and the label folded.

Another five years of club dates blew by before Kid Thomas entered a studio
to record again. Now working under the name of Tommy Louis and the Rhythm
Rockers, he recorded a pair of singles for the Los Angeles-based Muriel
label. The first release, coupling "The Hurt Is On" with "I Love You So,"
got little to no airplay in California, but did some brisk business in the
Southern states without any promotion behind it. The second single, combined
the storming "Wail Baby Wail" with the shuffle stomp of "Lookie There."
Though 'Wail' was firmly in the Little Richard mold of "Rockin' This Joint
Tonight," and featured deranged guitar work courtesy of Thomas regular axe
man Marshall Hooks, the record sank without a trace.

By the late 60s, our hero was working everything from low-rent beer joints
to private parties (one of these finding him employed by Dean Martin!).
While working one of his mainstays, the Cozy Lounge in South East Los
Angeles, the owner of Cenco Records caught the act and signed him to the
label. With Lloyd Glenn on piano and Joe Bennett from the Rhythm Rockers on
guitar, Kid Thomas entered a recording studio for one last time and recorded
a new version of "(You Are An) Angel" and an instrumental tip of the hat to
his home neighborhood, "Willowbrook." By the time anybody knew about it in
the blues community, the label was out of business.

One afternoon, while pulling his van away from a lucrative Beverly Hills home
he had just finished up, he ran over a young boy who had suddenly appeared
out of nowhere. The boy died later that afternoon. A manslaughter indictment
against Thomas was dropped because of insufficient evidence, but a few
months later he was due back in court on charges of driving with a revoked
license. Waiting for him outside the courthouse was the boy's father, who
pulled out a gun and shot Kid Thomas dead. Since the man who died in that
shooting incident was named Louis Thomas Watts, scarcely a word on Kid
Thomas' death was heard in the blues community for quite some time.

The eight issued sides of Kid Thomas/Tommy Louis continued to show up
piecemeal on various European compilations throughout the 70s, but a
complete overview was finally issued in 1993 on El Diablo. Those who
love great harmonica work, wild ass singing would do well to investigate the
good rockin' sounds and deep blues of Kid Thomas, a man who knew the
value of crazy, rockin' music and a big set of hair.

CD: Kid Thomas, Wail, Baby, Wail! (El Diablo EL CD 1001).
This bio is an abbreviated version of the liner notes of that CD, by Cub Koda.
For the complete version, see All Music Guide.