History

Who is Luther Thomas? And how did he get started?

For a short moment in 1981 alto saxophonist Luther Thomas broke through the sound barrier with the group Dizzazz and their album "Yo Momma" featuring his funky jazz rap. Their show brought down the house at Moers Jazz Festival in the Ruhr District. The avant-garde musician from Black Artist Group in St. Louis, Missouri, had blown his wild horn in Human Arts Ensemble and St. Louis Creative Ensemble along with among others trombonist Joseph Bowie. Now he was way up front in the role of super-effective-acid-sax playing rapper with a hard-ass beat and a couple of likeweise effective guitarrists and rythm section keeping up the pressure behind the brass. But Dizzazz realised only this one album, they never made it further inte the music jungle. Maybe Luther Thomas was before his time. At any rate, the fame and the fortune were conferred on others. Joseph Bowie started Defunkt and Luther Thomas Seemed to slide into oblivion.

Let´s get the fact´s from the 51-year-old musician who was passing through Christiania, and didn´t leave.

- I´m Luther Thomas and I am happy to tell you abot my life, but I don´t know where to start. I´ve been involved in so much and played with so many different musicians so many places. Sometimes music is so powerful that people can´t cope with it, so musicians have to be prepared to live whothout being accepted or accnowledged. If you want people to like you, it can be hard to take. Beauti is in the eye of the beholder, and the same goes for the ears of the listener. I am a musician first, that´s what I live for and tha´ts what gives me the satisfaction. I´m pleased when I learn a composition, because then I can begin to work on the music. Buisness is one thing - music another. Let the buissness men do buissness, and let me make music. People ask me: "Luther, who is your agent?" My answer is: " God is my agent and Jesus is my manager." But Jesus is a little harder to get hold of…so that part can be a hassle. My music is almost free, I play and I´m happy, as long as my expenses are covered.

- When I was 14, my grandparents gave me a baritone. I learned to play it real fast, and pretty fast a was playing in a school band, march bands and a top 40 band. Whenever James Brown released a new song, we learned it by heart from A to Z, and wore that record down till we knew all the licks. We played at all the dances and parties in East St. Louis and Brooklyn, Illionois, and we backed all the R&B artists coming through town, cause we knew the music. Around that time they started BAG (Black Artist Group), inspired by AACM in Chicago. That was in the mid 60´s, and I was just a teenager playing R&B. But I used to hang out with Oliver Lake, Hamiett Bluiett and Julius Hemphill, saxophone players who helped to start BAG.

- Oliver Lake and Oliver Sain inspired me most, but it was the alto Vi Redd that made me change from baritone to alto. When I heard her play, she sent me. So the BAG musicians were responsible for my musical development - along with Lester Bowie, who more or less took me under his wings and told me how to play and what not to play!
- He was the one who brought me to New York and helped me with my first recording.

- We were called Black Artist Group, but after a while a lot of white musicians joined BAG, and in the beginning of the 70´s it became hard to get grants, so we decided it was a good idea to change the name to Human Arts Association. Everybody could agree on that name - even musicians like Marty Ehrlich and John Zorn. Later some of us moved to the West Coast and started a commune in a school, and played a lot of music and concert projects. When that petered out, we moved to New York. We found a big room were we could play and live. This was when the loft scene and loft jazz was big in New York. Ornette Coleman had his artist house, there was Ladies Fort, and there was Sam Rivers and his Studio Rivbea. There were plenty of places to play wild music, the downtown music scene in New York was kind of a Mecca. They were all there: Art Ensemble of Chicago, Revolutionary Essemble, David Murray, World Saxophone Quartet. Cecil Taylor was working with his unit. That whole scene was like a community thing, there was so much going on, we were intent on creating new kinds of music - that´s what I grew up with in BAG in St. Louis. We mixed everything together:
- R&B, bebop, percussionists, world music, theatre and dance. But it wasn´t really going anywhere commercially and suddenly the rap thing hit the scene, but it was all part of the same urban neighborhood, it was all about the same thing: art, music and entertainment. That´s what we were doing back then, and that´s what I have to offer the world - and niw I´m here.
- Don Cerry got almost religious whenever he talked about copenhagen, and my cousin, Earl Cross, lived here for a while- may he rest in peace, yeah.
- I was always hearing about Copenhagen. Then I came here with James Chance & The Contortions. Yeah, maybe som people know him as James White. His name is really James Siegfried, I played baritone with The Contortions for 20 years. We played in Rust, Copenhagen in 1996 and we went to see Christiania and really dug it, so I came back from New York a couple of times and just stuck around - and I´m still here!

- Musicians want to play all the time, we can live all over the world. The battlefront is everywhere, and we are on the frontline. We are like NATO, but it´s not a weapon it´s an instrument, it´s all about love. We´re ready to go, have a ticket, have a gig, have horn, will travel.
-Believe it or not, I had some mainstreem bebop experiences of my own, though it´s not my strong side and it surprised me that they wanted me in the band at all. When I went to New York, I played with Frank Foster´s rehearsal big band every Monday night, the alto saxophonist C.Sharpe dragged me along so I could learn a little, he said. But at the same time I was playing with the Cecil Taylor - Jimmy Lyons big band, that was something else. Then One day I met Miles Davis with Art Blakey in the airport. I knew the Davis family from St. Louis, so he intorduced me to Blakey. He needed a saxophone player because Carter Jefferson hadn´t shown, and Blakey didn´t get paid if he didn´t have a sax. And that´s how I joined Blakey´s Jazz Messengers for a while, with Olu Dara on trumpet by the way! When Carter Jefferson came back, Blakey kept me on so we were a sexet. It was really hard work for me. Learning how to play Along Came Betty was a feat in itself.
- But now I am ready to rediscover that musical period, a whole repertoire that I skipped. All the young Danish musicians master it, so I have to work hard, but it´s fun and I learn alot. It´s a typical danish thing, there´s like a wall around Denmark, maybe there´s a roof too. Cause this is the only place I´ve ever been where people say, "Luther Who?" I´ve been playing and recording for 25 years and nobody knows anything about me. But I love it anyway, cause now I get to learn all the bebop and postbop I never played. Denmark has some of the world´s greatest jazz musicians; I really learn alot.

- So many elements and forces in music interests me; sounds and noises that don´t follow the regular scales, and formats that aren´t figured out and decided on beforehand. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight everything can be divided by 12. Open your window or walk outside, especially in the morning, you hear the most beautiful music there is. That´s what I try to capture, contrasts, the natural and the unnatural, that attract the other. Nature and plastic at the same time - you get it? People say: "Wow, are you serious", when they hear me play "weird" stuff. I can only say one thing: believe me, I´m serious.
- In the beginning of the 80´s, I wanted to play to a larger audience, for people dancing and rocking. But Rock & Roll wasn´t my thing. I wasn´t so much rock as I was roll, a kind of a roller, a high roller like in church, when they go into trance. I wanted to make people shout, I wanted the women to go crazy. I knew I could do it with my instrument, but it wasn´t enough for me to be turned on, I wanted to turn on the audience as well. So Dizzazz came out of my desire to perform on a higher level, where I could act wild and crazy. I had this burning desire to go on stage and yell and shout and let go - shake, rattle and roll. Now I leaned towards Rythm & Blues; that was my background along with the Babtist church, and I had toured with Dyke and The Blazers (the group that had a hit with Funky Broadway ) and the soul singer Tyrone Davis, a real master who taught me a lot. So that´s the direction the Dizzazz took, and that´s the way it is with me - freedom of expression. It´s my horn and I play it the way I want to. And I like rapping and I love to sing.

- We recorded "Yo Momma" and they pushed it in a big way, so I ended up with a contract at Island Records in New York, which turned out to be a disaster. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Oh yeah, after all that I really knew what showbusiness was all about. They sold the label to another company, and the new company wouldn´t let me record, or uphold the contract, so we never made another Dizzazz album. Whenever I think of the 80´s I think of that. I went into deep depressions, hard drugs - the worst kind of things you can imagine. On top of it all, i lost a big movie score project. I wound up owing a lot of people a lot of money and had a lot of hassle with lawyers. All those promesing projects ended in disaster. But I got through it somehow, survived and if nothing else, the 80s pushed my ass right into the 90s. At last an angel saved me and got me back on my feet. I had a family to take care of. I was saved by James Chance: He´d benn through the same grind as me. He signed with a label that re- released all his old Contortions albums on CD, a lot of tours followed, and I was lucky to get away of the States for a while.

- I make sounds that nobody else can make, I don´t want to brag, but I´m like flower, like a bird spreading its wings. I try to attract the opposite sex, I try to reach the young as well as the old with my sound. I try to create an environment, something you can relate to. Not everybody has the blues, and nobody likes to dance the Tango. I´m a so-called low achiever,´cause my greatest achievements are when I fulfil my own musical ambitions. When I hit the right chord, oh my, I pat myself on the back and say: " Luther thank you very much for a job well done." That´s my personal satisfaction. Then I can sleep at night and wake up rested. I dream of music. I live, breathe, eat and digest music all the time. That´s what I live for. It´s not about money, I live for what I do - and if nothing comes out of it, that´s just the way it goes.
- My biggest audience is myself, i´m my biggest fan, That´s who´s talking now. I´m the one who loves my music, I´m sorry. If i didn´t love it, I wouldn´t play it. You may not like it, but you have to listen as long as I wan´t to hear it. That´s the way it is, and that way I don´t get dissapointed.
- I´m like the guy who laughs laudest at his own joke. That´s me - the joking joker. Yeah Denmark thanks a lot.