Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 20, 1993 TAG: 9308200170
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By GREG JAFFE THE MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER
DATELINE: TUSKEGEE, ALA. LENGTH: Medium
But before his head begins to bob, before his foot even begins to tap, he cuts it short.
"Well I just ain't been feeling too bluesy lately," he apologizes.
Thomas, one of only a handful of old-fashioned bluesmen left in Macon County, hasn't played much since his partner Albert Macon, 73, died last May of kidney failure.
It just makes him feel lonely.
Thomas, his smile wide and easy, and Macon, who danced, strummed and sang with a scowl, were two of the best. In the 1980s, their music took them to the Knoxville World's Fair and on two tours of Europe.
Today, in their hometown in central Alabama, few have ever heard of the two lifelong bluesmen or their style of music, which influenced artists as diverse as Hank Williams Sr., Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones.
For Thomas that has meant that, beyond the occasional folklife festival, shows have been hard to find. He spends most of his days and nights alone in a crumbling sharecropper's shack without electricity or running water.
"Other people revere our music and our musicians but we really take them for granted," said blues historian Alice Harp, who has worked for the Alabama Folklife Festival. "It's a part of our Southern heritage, and it's time we started looking out for it."
No one taught Thomas and Macon how to play. No one had to teach them, the country blues were everywhere. "[Playing the blues] just come to me in the air," Macon said before his death. "I've been knowing how to play . . . I ain't took no lessons or nothing. It just grew up in me."
From the 1940s through the 1970s, Thomas and Macon spent most of their nights playing for friends and neighbors.
"People could relate to the country blues," said Mike McCracken, president of the Alabama Blues Society. "It was stripped down and emotional. It just drove right to the heart."
The music Thomas and Macon played was about their lives. It was also an escape from the grinding poverty of rural Alabama.
"Albert was the better singer and his guitar was more structured and solid than Robert," said George Mitchell, the folklorist who discovered the two men in 1981. "Robert was inspired by Albert and played off of him."
Mitchell took Macon and Thomas to the 1982 World's Fair in Knoxville, Tenn. Not long after that they went "cross seas" as Macon liked to say, touring Europe, playing folklife festivals in Holland and Germany.
A Dutch record company released their first album, called "Blues Boogie from Alabama."
Macon had always believed that if he had been discovered earlier he would have been a big star.
Thomas, by contrast, does not seem to be angry that he never made money from the blues. He never really expected to leave the plot of land in rural Alabama where he was born and lives today.
Those who happen upon Thomas at his home can't help but feel as if they have stumbled upon a corner of Alabama that belongs in another era.
There are no power wires or pipes near his sharecropper's shack. There are no windows to let in the light.
In front of his sagging porch, five chickens and a rooster peck at the ground. Two hungry dogs and a cat move slowly through the afternoon heat.
Thomas' clothes hang loosely from his 63-year-old frame.
"I ain't been playing but once or twice since Albert died," he says. "I just ain't got no blues on me right now."
Thomas recently played at the Alabama Folklife Festival, but said it wasn't the same without Macon.
"There's a man over yonder who blows a pretty good harp who I played with," Thomas said. "He blows pretty good, but he gets to shaking all of the time. I just went on playing by myself when he started shaking cause I didn't want to mess it up. But it don't feel right."
by CNB