From:   "jean.marc.pezet
Date:  Thu Aug 22, 2002  3:08 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You: Sonny Thompson
 
SONNY THOMPSON (By Dik de Heer)

Born Alfonso Thompson, 22 August 1916, Centreville,
Mississippi
Died 11 August 1989, Chicago, Illinois

Pianist / bandleader / songwriter.
Sonny Thompson was among the most prolific R&B
instrumentalists of the late '40s and early '50s. He
studied at the Chicago Conservatory of Music and in the
clubs he learned his piano craft from Art Tatum and Earl
Hines.
Thompson made his recording debut with an isolated boogie
woogie single for the Detroit-based Sultan label in 1946.
The next year he began recording for the fledgling
Miracle label. It was for this label that he would have
his greatest commercial success, striking gold with one
of the biggest R&B hits of the late 1940s, "Long Gone,
Pts. 1 & 2", released in early 1948. Sonny followed this
up with "Late Freight", another R&B # 1. He landed
another Top Ten and two more Top 20 singles for Miracle
in 1949, but then the label folded.
He moved to King Records in 1950 and would become the
label's "main man", the one who fixed the session, booked
the musicians, did most of the arranging and some of the
songwriting. Between all this session work (not only for
King, but also for its subsidiaries Federal and DeLuxe,
and occasionally for Vee-Jay and other companies), he
recorded extensively under his own name. Three of these
recordings went Top 10 in 1952, the biggest being "I'll
Drown In My Tears", which reached # 5. This song had a
vocal by Lula Reed, for whom Thompson supplied the
backing from 1951 to 1961. He handled A&R for King until
1964, when the label closed its Chicago office. During
the seventies he made occasional appearances at jazz
festivals and toured Europe more than once.
His death in 1989 brought to an end more than a decade of
obscurity.

Recommended listening:
The EP Collection (See For Miles 702).
Jam Sonny Jam : Original Miracle and King Masters, 1947-
1956 (Sequel NEM 900).