Tag: Vaneese Thomas

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“Faith Cometh By Hearing”: The Gospel Roots Behind the Memphis Sound

In covering the Memphis music beat, I talk to a lot of inspired artists — composers, singers, and performers who have rattled the world with their choice of notes, their tone. And they’ve worked in a variety of genres as sprawling as the city itself. But through all the conversations, all the life stories that come pouring out of them, there’s a common thread: church music.

Herman Green, recalling the days of his youth in the 1930s, before he’d ever imagined mastering the saxophone: “I played guitar with a blind pianist man named Lindell Woodson, who played piano for my stepfather’s church. I don’t even know how he could tell what key it was, but he’d get all over that piano like Art Tatum. And it was the Church of God, [claps and sings], you know? It was that kind of thing.”

Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

Fellowship Baptist Church

Booker T. Jones, on his earliest years as a musician: “I want you to mention Merle Glover. She was the organist, and she played the pipe organ. That was the first organ I ever played, at Mt. Olive Cathedral, over by Porter School on Vance Avenue. I was the pianist for the men’s Bible class. I was there at 9 o’clock every Sunday morning for years.”

William Bell, reminiscing about “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” his first hit for Stax Records: “At that particular time, I had been singing secular music in clubs, but the training and the background was strictly gospel. Most soul singers and country singers, we all came out of church … You sang with the choir for a while, and those choir rehearsals taught you how to sing in tune and treat a lyric and express an idea. So all of that helped as we created a career.”

DJ Squeeky, producer of 8Ball & MJG and Young Dolph, recalls growing up playing drums at First Baptist Church on Beale Street, where his mother has always gone. His uncle was “cold” — a master of any instrument in the church, able to jump in and accompany any singer, on any song.

MonoNeon

MonoNeon, trailblazing funk and avant garde bassist: “Eventually I started playing in church. That’s where I really got most of my skill from. Olivet Fellowship Baptist Church on Knight Arnold.”

Vaneese Thomas, noting how she and siblings Carla and Marvell grew up a little differently from most: “Our church was not the gospel experience people expect from Memphis. We grew up in a very straight-laced Baptist church. So we sang hymns and anthems.”

And that’s just a small sampling. Everywhere you turn, the influence of African-American churches on the Memphis sound — even in the era of hip-hop — is inescapable. The church crops up in nearly every musician’s biography, yet remains under-recognized for what it is: a crucible for musical talent and skill without parallel.

Minus Red Productions/Candied Yam Music

Kirk Whalum

In order to dig a little deeper into this milieu, I could think of no better guide than Kirk Whalum, composer, producer, and sideman extraordinaire, whose command of the saxophone has carried the tones and phrasing honed in his father’s church across the world.

“It’s that thing that we take for granted many times, but other people go, ‘Well, that’s just exactly what I need,'” Whalum reflects. “Whether it’s Quincy Jones — as many sessions as I’ve done with him — or many other artists, they hear Memphis in my sound. Not just Memphis, but Memphis church. And it’s specifically the black church. I mean, Aretha Franklin — her dad was pastoring a black church here. And, you know, Maurice White and David Porter were singing in a black church group in their formative years. So those are the things I’m talking about when I say it’s all about that soul that you get from that place. And that makes its way into art.”

If Whalum takes a philosophical perspective on the idea, perhaps it’s a family thing, given that his late father, Kenneth Whalum Sr., once was pastor of the Olivet Baptist Church on Southern Avenue, and his brother, Kenneth Jr., now presides over that church’s latest incarnation, the New Olivet Baptist Church. It’s only natural that Kirk looks beyond the more superficial influence of, say, the gospel repertoire.

“I think it’s more of an approach. In white culture — what represents Western white culture? I think ballet. In ballet, the more intense you get, the higher you get: literally, physically higher. And the pinnacle of ballet is en pointe. You’re on your toes, you know, and you’re reaching for the sky. And just the opposite applies to African music. When you hear people talking about getting down, it’s like the pinnacle of the African musical experience: You’re almost on the floor. You’re bending down all the way.

“I think that’s a good metaphor for the approach that you get from black music. It’s not about someone ‘playing soulful,’ it’s about believing in something and being a part of something and someone. In this case, Jesus. That brings about a completely different approach. It’s not so much the technique or those other things that we all aspire to. The main thing is that feeling, that conviction.”

Yet there’s another force at work here as well, something larger than oneself that players can reach for and one that often goes hand in hand with the church: family. This too arises over and over again in Memphis musicians’ stories, with such a diversity of what “family” actually means that it need not be reduced to a simple Norman Rockwell image.

Barry Campbell with John Black and Austin Bradley

Musical families have marked the evolution of Memphis music since before that history was written. Herman Green never knew his biological father, Herman Washington Sr., a player in W.C. Handy’s band who was murdered when Green was only 2 years old. But his stepfather, Rev. Tigner S. Green, played a major role in his love of music. Other Memphis families were even more legendary: the Newborns, the Jacksons, and the Thomases, from father Rufus to his three children, to name but a few.

The Whalums, of course, are a formidable musical force in this town, yet they are far from the only dynasty springing from a fortuitous union of both religious and filial continuity. Take the Barnes family: Deborah Gleese, daughter of Rev. James L. Gleese, was, for a time, a Raelette, one of the background singers for Ray Charles, before she married gospel singer Duke Barnes and family life demanded that she leave touring behind.

Converting to the Seventh Day Adventist Church, the couple sang and played around Memphis regularly, ultimately incorporating their children into the show. Today, the Sensational Barnes Brothers, brothers Courtney and Chris, are a gospel act in their own right on the newly minted Bible & Tire Recording Company, while their older brother Calvin is the Minister of Music at the Olivet Fellowship Baptist Church.

Seeing him lead the band this past Sunday was an excercise in polished euphoria. From the mellow background passages, bubbling under Dr. Geno Gibson’s sermon, to the band and choir syncing flawlessly with a spritely drum machine and video projections, the service was a master class in stage craft. In the context of references to young congregation members who had recently been murdered, and in Gibson’s unflinching critique of the New Jim Crow, the music’s shimmer was a welcome blast of ecstatic community.

Jonny Pineda

Jason Clark

Mostly, the service created a spirit of inclusiveness, and, it turns out, the church band is itself a testament to such openness. Calvin Barnes remained a Seventh Day Adventist for years when he began playing for Olivet Fellowship, before finally joining the church where he works nearly a decade ago. This is not uncommon. Jason Clark, executive director of the Memphis-based Tennessee Mass Choir, puts it this way: “Sometimes it’s difficult to find the level of talent you need right within a congregation. Sometimes you have to be a part of a congregation that’s willing to support the music industry financially, and that doesn’t always come from your home church.”

In the case of the Olivet Fellowship (which splintered from the New Olivet Baptist Church some years ago), that openness to outside talent extended to allowing one young drummer to rehearse his secular band in the church during off-hours. Calvin Barnes recalls meeting the drummer’s bass player, a kid named DJ, whose father was a well-known bassist already. “The first time I met him, he was playing with this little group, kids really, and some of them were members of my church. DJ was probably around 12 and came in with his bass bigger than him, and when he played it was like ‘Oh. My. God.’ He wasn’t as good as he is now, but he was playing like a grown man. At that time he was super shy. But when the church ended up losing our bass player, we said, ‘Why not DJ?'”

Though DJ didn’t know the formidable gospel repertoire, he soon mastered it. Calvin nurtured both his idiosyncracies and his ensemble chops. “I really took him under my wing,” says Barnes. “And on the music tip, I would challenge him. Because he’s always been that avant garde-in-the-making type. So when the pastor gets up to preach, musicians typically go off to the side because they’re done for the moment. They just chill. Not him. He would sit there in his chair, turn his volume down, and start practicing bass. He’d do that through the entire sermon, every week. Over and over and over. And I would tell him, ‘You’re gonna be major.'”

Calvin Barnes, Minister of Music at Olivet Fellowship Baptist Church, on keyboards

As he coached the young bassist, little did Barnes realize that DJ’s idiosyncracies were what would lead him to greater renown. Some years later, DJ began posting YouTube videos of his more off-the-wall music, under the name MonoNeon. One such video caught the ear of Prince, who flew him to Paisley Park in Minneapolis to jam and record several times before the mega-star’s untimely death. Today, MonoNeon continues to ride that momentum, both with his own albums and in collaborative bands like Ghost-Note.

Church bands, it seems, are especially open to child prodigies. Jason Clark remembers well one young talent in particular: “When I played at Abundant Grace, close to 28 years ago, there was a young guy named Stanley Randolf, who was 9 years old. He was one of the most phenomenal drummers that I had ever heard. Now he’s Stevie Wonder’s drummer, to this day! We have quite a bit of those stories here.”

Clark himself is no stranger to being a prodigy nurtured by both a musical family and the church. Both playing in a church band and directing the Tennessee Mass Choir, which pulls talent from across the state to Memphis, he seems to have been destined for a life in music. “The choir was actually started by my mother, Fannie Cole-Clark, back in 1990. Next year we’ll be celebrating 30 years. Our mother passed away six years ago, so it was handed over to me when she passed. A lot of people remember her from back in the day, when she started the Fannie Clark Singers, produced by the late, great Willie Mitchell. It was a gospel group. I actually started out playing tambourine for the Fannie Clark Singers when I was 6 years old.”

Clark went off to a life in religious music and credits his success, in part, to time he spent at one of the city’s most pre-eminent musical ministries, Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church. “Dr. Leo Davis is one of the best Ministers of Music that I’ve worked under,” he says. “I know he single-handedly trained a lot of musicians here in the city. And to this day, they have probably one of the top five bands in the city. I think that’s due to his leadership.”

Now Clark’s an accomplished keyboardist, while his brother Jackie is a go-to bass player for the likes of Kirk Whalum and others. But for Clark, the luck of being born among musical folk is not a prerequisite for thriving in the church music scene. “No, not really,” he says. “There of course are a few like that, but there are some who are just gifted. There are some who went to school. That’s the beauty of church musicians. You get such a variety. That’s why our genre is more diverse than any other style of music. It encompasses jazz, to pop, to that gritty bluesy feel, to classical. I really credit that to the fact that not everyone grew up in church, just playing gospel music. So you get this whole eclectic feel within the gospel arena. There are just so many different beginnings to it.”

And, as it turns out, there are happy endings as well. While church bands can foster talent in the making, they can also offer a haven to great players who once toured the world. Such was the scene I stumbled upon at the historic Mt. Pisgah Christian Methodist Episcopal (C.M.E.) Church in Orange Mound, which only last month celebrated its 139th anniversary. Attending their service on that Sunday was like turning the calendar back a half century. On either side of the 90-year-old building’s proscenium, high above the altar, were two vintage Leslie speakers, hard-wired to a classic Hammond organ. At the keyboard sat Winston Stewart, longtime member of the Bar-Kays throughout their ’70s and ’80s heyday. Playing bass behind him was Barry Campbell, who was in demand as a New York session player for nearly 20 years, playing with the likes of Eric Clapton, David Bowie, and Quincy Jones. Together with drummer and singer Austin Bradley, guitarist John Black, pianist Davida Winfrey, and the earnest choir led by City Councilwoman Jamita Swearengen, they created magic.

As one friend noted, finding such talent in unassuming corners of the community is as Memphis as it gets. And it helped me appreciate the phenomenon of the church band as a haven as well as a hothouse for youth. As Campbell tells me, “When I was in New York, the music industry began to change. Everyone went for that MIDI programming thing, like with hip-hop and rap. And the rent in New York City kept going up. After a while I was like, ‘Why am I here?'”

So he returned to the community where he grew up. “It’s a church in the ‘hood,” he says. “It’s old-school. It’s a good church. Young people want that contemporary stuff, those mega churches with flat screens and big sound systems. But musically, at Mt. Pisgah we’re still kinda doing it the way they did it back in the ’60s and ’70s. We’re not really throwing in much of the jazz fusion that’s going on now. We’re more soul and blues-oriented. We don’t get into too much Kirk Franklin-type stuff because we don’t have a youth choir. Everybody in the choir is old enough to be my big brother or daddy or mama.”

Neither Campbell nor Stewart grew up playing in the church but came to it later in life. For Campbell, this was partly a practical matter. “Live music isn’t as popular as it once was. So a lot of musicians have gone to the church over the last 30 years. Once I came back, all my guys had a church gig. Every church had at least a bass drum and keyboard. Some churches even had synthesizers. Some had bands. I even knew white churches that had orchestras. It just expanded to where it’s a thing now.”

On this late autumn Sunday, I was glad it was a thing, as Winston Stewart coaxed waves of emotion from the Hammond organ in a minor key, playing even the drawbars’ shades of timbre deftly, while the bass and drums defined a slinky pocket. Though Stewart’s a relative newcomer to the gospel idiom, it was clear that his lifetime of music and soul was pouring out of those speakers, as one extended organ showcase piece after another evoked waves of blues-drenched sorrow and joy.

It was then that the Reverend Willie Ward stepped up and quoted Romans 10:17. “Faith cometh by hearing!” he declared. Still recovering from the reverberating wooden chambers of the organ, bass, drums, and guitar, topped with those soaring voices, I was inclined to believe it.

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Vaneese Thomas Brings It All Back Home, With Show, New Album

Vaneese Thomas

Though she’s a longtime resident of New York, Vaneese Thomas has Memphis deep in her soul. So her show at Lafayette’s Music Room tonight has added significance. As the youngest daughter of Rufus Thomas, she had a ringside seat for the Stax circus in the label’s heyday, and she saw her older siblings, “Memphis Queen” Carla Thomas and keyboardist and producer Marvell Thomas, thrive there. Vaneese, on the other hand, left Memphis for college, where she cultivated her own style, and a New York-based career. Her self-titled debut album spawned the Top 20 US R&B singles “Let’s Talk It Over” and “(I Wanna Get) Close To You” in 1987.

She’s covered a lot of stylistic ground since then, most recently with albums grounded in the blues. But her latest album, Down Yonder, is a more eclectic slice of classic soul. Thomas is the project’s co-producer and either wrote or co-wrote all of its twelve tracks. Joining her are: Shawn Pelton on drums and percussion; Paul Adamy, Conrad Korsch and Will Lee on bass; Al Arlo on acoustic and electric guitars; Thomas’ husband and the disc’s co-producer, Wayne Warnecke, on dobro and percussion; Tash Neal on dobro and electric guitar; Robbie Kondor on keyboards and organ; Charles Hodges and Paul Mariconda on organ; Marc Franklin on trumpet; Tim Ouimette on trumpet and flugelhorn; Lannie McMillan and Ken Geoffree on tenor saxophone; Kirk Smothers and Rick Kriska on baritone saxophone; Katie Jacoby on violin; and, last but not least, sister Carla Thomas and Berneta Miles on background vocals; and Kevin Bacon on lead vocals.

Speaking with Thomas recently about her upcoming show, I found it has a regional focus that resonates with Memphis as much as any of her other blues records.

Memphis Flyer: How did this new album come about?

Vaneese Thomas: Well, I mentioned it in the spring, and my husband was like, Okay, here we go again…But I’m so happy with the sound of it. I think it’s the best material I’ve ever written. It’s good story telling.

In your most recent albums, you’ve been exploring the straight up blues, but this sounds like a dynamite classic soul record.

I’ve been calling it ‘blues and beyond.’ Because, you’re right, there’s so much blues and gospel in it, but it’s a little departure from and expansion on traditional blues. Like any style of music, it has the capacity to expand, and you certainly don’t have to stick to the traditional Delta blues.

Some of the promotional material notes that “she tells stories of her Southern upbringing.” How personal are these stories?

Well, it’s not necessarily my personal experience, but certainly the experience of my Southern upbringing. For example, the story of “Ebony Man” is about African-American farmers and the difficulty they’ve had ever since post-slavery, in keeping their land. Because a lot of it was taken from them. It’s a current phenomenon as well. The New York Times just had an article about this very issue. Where ConAgra and lots of corporate farming interests have been pressuring people to give up their land. And of course, the black farmer, being at the bottom of the totem pole, has had the most difficulty over time, maintaining his property. So those are the kinds of stories I’m telling: not just my personal experience, but my Southern experience.

Wasn’t your father’s family from rural Mississippi? Did he have rural roots?

He was a baby when his family moved to Memphis, so he didn’t really know the rural experience. My mother did because she was raised on a farm in Whitehaven. But daddy was always urban. His parents moved into the city almost right after he was born.

You moved to New York when you were fairly young. You seem pretty happy there.

Oh I am. It gave me an opportunity that I would never have found here, for expanding my musical horizons. There used to be so many ways to have income streams. Playing live, doing television, touring. All the kinds of things you can do. But because television was rooted there, I got to know Paul Shaffer and Will Lee and all those guys who did TV. So I was always first call for television shows, and artists coming through town who needed singers. That sort of thing. So New York’s been very, very good to me.

And I suppose you’re always helping to bring a bit of Southern flavor to the city…

Oh, no question. ‘Cos they love that kind of background in your singing.

Edgar Mata

Carla and Vaneese Thomas

Speaking of your singing, as I listen to the new album, I’m reminded how different your voice is from Carla’s.

Oh my gosh! She has a sweeter tone, I think. It’s interesting. Our church was very straight-laced. It was not the gospel experience people expect from Memphis. We grew up in a very straight-laced Baptist church. So we sang hymns and anthems. It was very different from, say, the Pentecostal religious experience. So neither of us really had gospel as a foundation to our singing. But because we had access to the blues and big band and gospel, just being in Memphis, it certainly was a part of our experience.

Did any singers in particular have a big impact on you?

Well, it’s interesting. When I was younger, it was the British Invasion. I loved all the Beatles’ stuff. The variety of their music was a big influence on me. Because I realized you can’t be monolithic. You have to have a wide variety of musical experience to grow. So I loved the Beatles.  I was always playing and singing, but when I got to college, I began to play and sing at the same time more often, for concerts. And Elton John was a tremendous influence on my playing and writing style.

You were playing piano?

Yes, piano. And if you listen to “Down Yonder,” not only is that song a little gospel-y at the end, but at the beginning it’s very Elton John, like “Your Song” or “Tiny Dancer.” That kinda thing. So if you combine all that with other influences like the Staple Singers and Otis Clay and Al Green, you’ve got a tremendous well to draw from.

You have quite a band to back up your singing.

Oh yes! I am so pleased with the guys that played, both in New York and here. In fact, the horn players on the album are playing with me at Lafayette’s. All three of them. Then in New York, one of the best drummers ever is Shawn Pelton. This is right in his wheelhouse. And Will Lee can play anything. He’s just multi talented, from blues to Jazz. And Robby Kondor used to be Carole King’s son-in-law, so I’ve known Robby for years. And he plays gospel as well as anybody I’ve heard. It’s sort of like a Spooner Oldham kind of vibe. These cats are really multifacted. And when I came down here to do some overdubs, I got Marc Franklin to do my horn arrangements. He just sits in it so great. And Lannie McMillan and Kirk Smothers. And my sister sang background on a few songs, and my friend Berneta. So it’s just the best of all worlds.

Where did you record when you worked here?

At Royal Studios, of course! If the walls could talk… And Boo Mitchell was the engineer, so I had all my peeps with me. 
Courtesy of Stax Museum of American Soul Music

Back: Mr. & Mrs. Marvell Thomas, Vaneese Thomas; Front: Carla, Lorene, and Rufus Thomas

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The Thomas Sisters: We Are Family

CREDIT: Courtesy of Stax Museum of American Soul Music

In February, the Memphis Housing Authority took steps to remove the last dwellers from the city’s oldest public housing project, Foote Homes. Though many had left already, and though carcinogens stained the surrounding soil, some longtime residents were reluctant to go. Perhaps they still had vivid memories of a time when Foote Homes was at the center of a thriving neighborhood culture in South Memphis.

Some may have even known the place soon after it was built in 1941, when a young couple, Rufus and Lorene Thomas, moved in to start a family with their young son, Marvell. When daughter Carla was born a year later, they had little inkling that the Thomas family was just beginning, or that the father, son, daughter, and daughter-to-come would one day become stars on a global scale.

Rufus was a natural showman, having proven himself on the road with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and the Royal American troupe, tap dancing, scat singing, and learning how to work a crowd. Perhaps it seemed he was leaving that life behind for good when he and Lorene settled at Foote Homes, but the call of the stage still rang in his ears.

Before long, he was back in touch with his old history teacher from Booker T. Washington High School, Nat D. Williams, a learned writer and entertainer — and a pillar of the community. Williams had been hosting a popular Amateur Show on Beale Street, and when he left, Rufus stepped in to replace him.

He would end up staying for over a decade, helping to launch the careers of B.B. King, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and local jazz stalwart Herman Green, among others. From there he would become a renowned deejay and recording artist, of course, but this track record can obscure the fact that he was also, first and foremost, a family man.

Courtesy of Stax Museum of American Soul Music

Back: Mr. & Mrs. Marvell Thomas, Vaneese Thomas; Front: Carla, Lorene, and Rufus Thomas

To learn a bit more about the spirit of the Thomas family, which would ultimately nurture the talents of siblings Marvell, Carla, and Vaneese, I made my way to that hub of African-American culture in South Memphis, the Four Way Grill. Established in 1946, just a few blocks from the Capitol Theater, the eatery fed the Thomas kids and thousands of other Memphians for generations. When the Capitol was sold and became Satellite, and then Stax Records, the Four Way was a natural hang-out for performers as they dreamed of stardom. Community leaders of all kinds flocked there, and many of their photographs grace the walls. It’s the embodiment of the community of South Memphis and a reminder that to raise families full of potential, it may not take a village. Sometimes the neighborhood will do.

When Carla and Vaneese join me, I have to pinch myself. “Gee whiz, it’s Christmas!” I think. Of course, as soon as we sit down, talk gravitates to their legendary father who, even 16 years after his death, somehow still commands the room.

Vaneese, the “youngster” of the family, wants to emphasize the musicianship of her father. “If you ever see album credits listing so and so as the arranger of a Rufus Thomas session, don’t believe it. Daddy was always right there, going to each musician, telling them their parts.” She and Carla speak a little wistfully of their parents, and of their brother Marvell, who passed away earlier this year.

And yet it’s like they’re all there with us, as Carla relives her childhood days when Rufus first began working at “The Mother Station of Negroes,” WDIA. It was the first station in the nation to feature African-American deejays, and, as with the Amateur Hour on Beale, the road there was paved by Nat D. Williams, who helped Rufus step into B.B. King’s on-air slot after King’s music took him on the road.

Despite the progressive moves the station made at the time, Rufus found himself in a bizarre, half-segregated world where the deejays of color were not allowed to actually play the records: That was left to the white “engineers.” Announcers like Rufus would pull their record selections from the shelf, log them in, and step back as the engineers spun the platters. In any case, it wasn’t the magic of the records that captivated Carla so much as the live chorus, masterminded by deejay A.C. Williams. His “Teen Town Singers,” dreamt up as a promotional foray into local high schools, became an inspiration to many an aspiring vocalist.

Courtesy of Stax Museum of American Soul Music

Carla Thomas

“When daddy started at WDIA, we’d listen every day,” Carla recalls. “And that’s when I started listening to the Teen-Towners. I must have been 9 or 10. And I’d be, ‘Am I gonna be in there?'” Rufus would reply, “You’re too young. You can’t be in there.” Still, she persisted. “I wanna be in the Teen Town Singers!”

“She begged for a year,” says Vaneese.

“And then one day, he was nice to me,” says Carla. “He had no idea I could sing or even carry a note. I didn’t either! I just knew I wanted to be in it. One day he said, ‘I tell you what. You’re about to get on my nerves. Okay, I gotta go pull my show.’ They still had engineers in those days. ‘Now, you sit there with Martha Jean [Steinberg], and you just sit there til I finish.’ He goes in the back and he sits me with Martha Jean. And she was so gorgeous. She was just so beautiful. And she said, ‘Hey, you’re Rufus’ little girl.’

“I’m thinking ‘Oh God, I’m at WDIA!'” But something appeared to be wrong, the show’s producer was in a mild panic. After the main chorus sang, they were to broadcast the Teen Town Talent Time, where other high schoolers could join the chorus, often winning prizes. They were short one singer. Someone said, “Can you sing, little girl?”

“She didn’t know me from a hole in the ground,” says Carla, still excited at the memory. “And I said, ‘No, ma’am, I can’t sing,’ because my daddy had already told me I couldn’t sing. And then I thought, ‘Oh my God, the Teen Towners are still in there!’ And I said, ‘Mm-hmm, I sing!’ I didn’t know I could sing a note. I just knew I wanted to tell daddy I could actually sing with the Teen Towners. Anyway, I went in, and they had a little riser she found and stood me on it. And they had the little mic come down right in front of me. That’s how I won, because it picked up my voice. People called and said, ‘Who is that little girl? We wanna vote for her.’ I kid you not!”

Her talents thus revealed, rules were bent and Carla was allowed to join the regular Teen Town chorus. “Every Wednesday, every Friday, every Saturday. I never missed one rehearsal. From 11 years old to 17,” she remembers.

Courtesy of Stax Museum of American Soul Music

Carla Thomas

“And that was the case for all of them,” recalls Vaneese, who later won the talent contest herself but never joined as a regular member. “Which is why so many of them became professional singers. Percy Wiggins. He was one. His brother Spencer. Tyrone Smith. Ed Townsend.” And perhaps the most renowned Teen Towner of them all, Isaac Hayes.

As the Teen Towners made their appearances, Rufus began cutting records that were released on Chess, Meteor, and other labels, including Sun Records’ first hit, “Bear Cat.” Even then, he continued to deejay at WDIA, working days at a textile mill to make ends meet. Meanwhile, the other Thomas kids began their forays into music as well.

Marvell began studying music at LeMoyne College. His professor was known as “Doc Whitaker” — it wasn’t until later that the Thomas kids learned of his importance to American music history, having served as part of James Reese Europe’s military band during World War I, widely recognized for having pioneered orchestral jazz both at home and abroad.

Vaneese also learned from her brother’s music professor. “I took lessons there for 10 years,” she says. “He was a very, very cultured man. A very brilliant guy. A classical pianist. He spoke in French to me, and I wound up majoring in French in college as a result. I just love the language.”

Whitaker clearly made an impression on Marvell as well, as marked by the trajectory he traced in the music industry before, during, and after Stax. “Marvell — he carved a niche for himself in Memphis, in the early days of traveling bands, and by working with different arrangers and band leaders,” says Vaneese. This was apparent when Rufus showed up unannounced at the fledgling Satellite Records’ studio in 1960, proposing to cut a record. When Rufus and Carla sang what would become Satellite’s first hit, it featured Marvell on piano and a young multi-instrumentalist on baritone sax by the name of Booker T. Jones. Both would figure heavily in crafting the Satellite/Stax sound.

Vaneese Thomas

Carla, for her part, had gained enough confidence from her Teen Towner work to begin writing songs, which Rufus diligently captured on a home recorder. His tape of “Gee Whiz,” a song Carla had written at the age of 15 or 16, earned her her own session at Satellite and proved to be an even bigger hit than their previous duet. It remains a career-defining song for her to this day. She laughs at the song’s longevity, and the many ways she’s performed it. “I used to play with this little combo, we would go all over Tennessee. It was a jazz combo, and there they were playing ‘Gee Whiz,'” she chuckles.

The Stax tale is ultimately a tragic one, ending with the label’s bankruptcy in 1976. For Carla, moreso than most Stax artists, it proved to be the de facto end of her recording career, but not of her performances. Ironically, one of her fondest memories was the time she was called on to fill in for a Motown artist. When Tammi Terrell, partner in many hit duets with Marvin Gaye, was forced to quit performing due to a brain tumor, Carla somewhat reluctantly agreed to fill her shoes when Gaye played the Apollo Theater. For the confirmed fan of the duo, it was a watershed moment and foreshadowed a future career based more on performance than recording.

After the Stax collapse, Carla performed tirelessly in television appearances and concerts throughout the world. As Vaneese reflects, “It’s so precious that it doesn’t matter, the time frame since you had your last record. It’s timeless, classic stuff.” For her part, Carla seems content with her track record, noting, “Isn’t it amazing how people make you realize how important Stax was — more important to them sometimes than Stax was to itself.”

As the 1970s wore on, the time was ripe for the third Thomas sibling to step up to bat. But Vaneese was determined to explore music on her own terms, without relying on the Thomas family legend. “The Thomas legend, yes,” she muses. “And you know it took a long time for me to want to embrace it. And when I did, it was okay then. And it was because I had worked very hard on my own, and by then I appreciated the legacy.”

The story of her career begins with leaving Memphis. “I went to Swarthmore, outside of Philadelphia,” she recalls. “And I really didn’t know for sure what I was going to do. I was avoiding music, sort of. Every time it would chase me I would turn. But eventually I started doing it. I sang in recording studios in Philadelphia. Me and a friend were the B singers of the Sweethearts of Soul. I don’t know if you know the Sigma Sweethearts, but they sang on all the Spinners records and all those people like that. We didn’t get that high on the ladder; we sang on the lesser lights. But it didn’t matter, we were getting great studio experience.”

A brief time courting success as half of a duet led to some minor record deals, but it wasn’t until she tried her hand as a solo act that she broke out. “My first solo record was on Geffen Records. And I had a top 10 R&B record, called ‘Let’s Talk It Over.’ I’ve been doing this a long time,” she laughs. That first hit was in 1987, followed by another, “(I Wanna Get) Close to You.” Subsequent records failed to chart as well, but “then I moved to New York and did a lot of commercials.”

That last comment underplays Vaneese’s varied career since her Geffen days. Her work can be heard on countless voice-overs and as a background singer for the likes of Aretha Franklin. And with her ongoing work as a singer, writer, and producer, even as she remains planted in New York, she has launched a new phase of her career — exploring the rootsier sounds of her hometown.

“When I put out Blues for My Father in 2014, that was my first foray into the blues. So I did that really in honor of Daddy, obviously. And because people don’t know that he sang blues all through his career, from the beginning to the end. So I wanted to dab my toe in that, and I’ve grown to love it. And I want to sing more earthy stuff.” Last year’s The Long Journey Home continues in that vein, and she shows no sign of letting up.

Meanwhile, all records aside, there is the call of the stage. In recent years, it has brought the two sisters closer together. Aside from one or two performances in the 1970s featuring Rufus and all three siblings, Carla and Vaneese had not performed together until recently. It began with an appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2002, and it seems to be accelerating. “Carla and I did one in the Canary Islands this summer,” notes Vaneese, and that was fast on the heels of performing at the famed Poretta Soul Festival in Italy. This fall, they were scheduled to sing at the Ponderosa Stomp Festival, but Hurricane Nate nixed that. Nonetheless, they show no signs of slowing. As we sit in the Four Way Grill sipping our tea, they’ve come to terms with each other, with the neighborhood that nurtured them, and where fate may yet take them — together.