Interviewer: You were going to tell me about Booker T and the MGs, as a group how important were they to this new Memphis sound?
Thomas: Booker T.
Thomas: and the MGs were, was a basic part of Stax.
Thomas: Steve Cropper, Doug Dunn, Al Jackson, Jr., and Booker T.
Thomas: himself.
Thomas: Now Booker T.
Thomas: and, and that group along with other musicians played behind me along with being a group for themselves.
Thomas: The MG stands for the Memphis Group.
Thomas: And when they played behind me that was funk personified 'cause Al Jackson could play.
Thomas: Al Jackson, Jr., could play.
Thomas: And believe it or not I taught him a little stuff on drums when he was a kid growing up because I've known him all of his life because I worked with his father.
Thomas: But that group was basic Stax.
Thomas: They played behind every artist: Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, ah, Mavis, the Staples Singers, William Bell, Otis Redding, every Stax artist, Booker T.
Thomas: and the MGs played behind them along with The Bar-Kays, The Bar-Kays played behind some of the others but they always played behind me, dominant part of Stax.
Thomas: So I would say had it not been for Steve Cropper and the rest of that group, I just don't think the music itself would have been what we did finally come across with.
Interviewer: Do you think they had a special energy because it was a mixed group or was that not relevant?
Thomas: No, I, I don't think, ah, because it was a mixed group that anything was special about them because they proved one thing that Sam Phillips discarded his black artist.
Thomas: I feel that for the simple reason, he didn't feel like whites and blacks could connect.
Thomas: Now we go to Stax and beaucoup of artists, beaucoup means a whole lot of folk, beaucoup of artists come together: black, white, blue, plaid, all of them.
Thomas: So need I say more? Look what you got.
Thomas: So Sam Phillips, look what you lost out on by not connecting with something like that.
Interviewer: Tell me that story, when Jerry Wexler came to visit me in the mid-sixties.
Thomas: Ah, after we had recorded "'Cause I Love You" it attracted attention to Atlantic Records.
Thomas: And Jerry Wexler and his, ah, cohorts, there were some other people with him, were living at the Claridge, Claridge Hotel.
Thomas: So now my wife and I went to see him at…
Interviewer: Again.
Thomas: When, when, when, when we recorded "'Cause I Love You" it attracted the attention of Jerry Wexler and Atlantic Records.
Thomas: We recorded that here in Memphis.
Thomas: It, in fact it was the first hit record for Stax.
Thomas: Now Jerry Wechler… Wexler comes to Memphis and we're going to his hotel room to have a visit with him, to talk, money that is.
Thomas: So my wife and I went and we found out then that we had to go in the back.
Thomas: This was in early sixties, go in the back to go up on the service elevator, couldn't go through the front door.
Thomas: And I refused to go and ride an elevator.
Thomas: Now I'm clean, I'm sharp, I got on my good clothes and I'm looking as good or better than Jerry Wexler or any of the rest of the group that was with us including all those white folks.
Thomas: I'm cleaner than, than, than, than 19 yards of chitlins and you clean them up good to eat them.
Thomas: And I rebelled, I decided I'm not going and I turned around to go back but my wife being the type person that she is, she said, - look baby, said, let's go this time.
Thomas: And they're listening to her.
Thomas: Let's go this time but never again will you ask my husband to go in the back door of any establishment and especially on a freight elevator.
Thomas: So we went up, I'm still hesitant, we go up and we talked and we make the arrangements and the arrangements were good but getting to the place is what.
Thomas: And no more back doors did I go in.
Interviewer: How do you think black music changed from the early fifties to the Stax days and what was called soul music?
Thomas: Well with, with Stax Records if you want to try and define soul from rhythm and blues, I, I guess to, to, to really try to figure this out, blues and rhythm was connected with a black voice anyway, they just defined rhythm and blues to anybody black with the exception of a few artists who happened to have that beautiful nice voice that kind of, as you call, crossed over and got into the pop field over there like Johnny Mathis and the feel of the other artists like him.
Thomas: Now they didn't categorize him as a rhythm and blues artist even though he was black but all the rest of them was rhythm and blues, rhythm and blues groups, rhythm and blues artists.
Thomas: But then slowly Otis Redding came in and when he came in it changed, it changed, the lyrics and the way that he presented his version of his music and how he wanted it to go which turned out to be not gravelly like mine and not rhythm and blues like the others.
Thomas: So that's how soul I feel like was slowly gotten into.
Thomas: It was the voice change, the beauty of a voice that was not a Johnny Mathis type.
Thomas: So you got a Johnny Mathis which is pop, you got Otis Redding in between there which we call soul music and you got the other which is rhythm and blues, funk and gut bucket blues.
Thomas: That's how I define it.
Interviewer: Were you in town here when Doctor King was killed.
Interviewer: Talk about that and what it meant in terms of the music that came out of Memphis if it had ...
Thomas: I, I don't think I was, at the time that Doctor Martin Luther King was killed, I don't think I was here.
Thomas: I think I was in New York and I was working at the Apollo Theater.
Thomas: And that's 1968, I don't, I don't think I was here in the city at the time.
Thomas: I was in New York, I had been working and, ah, that's how I got the message but that kind of, that kind of messes and that kind of news travels like a shot, shhoo.
Thomas: In the little while it was all over the country in fact all over the world.
Thomas: But again, let, let me concentrate here, no, no, I wasn't there, I was here.
Thomas: Remember it was a long time ago and my mind ain't, the old gray mare ain't what it used to be, but, no, I was here.
Thomas: And, ah, in my neighborhood, ah, it was bad enough but it wasn't real bad.
Thomas: But some of the white officials that knew me came to my home and asked me to see if I could quiet down, ah, ah, the unrest that was in the neighborhood.
Thomas: And, ah, I did.
Thomas: I was able to do a little something in there, ask the fellows in the neighborhood that, that was about to create some problem, in their own neighborhood.
Interviewer: What about within Stax, did it have any effect?
Thomas: Well, naturally something like that has the effect but music-wise, it, it didn't affect the music and the ability of the musicians to play.
Thomas: But naturally you, you, you feel, you feel something, you, you, you feel a great loss to something like that.
Thomas: So you had to feel the effects of it even, even if you were playing, it probably came out good but it's not that you didn't feel the effects of it because it was something that affected the whole world at that time.
Thomas: But we were fortunate enough to make it through it.
Interviewer: Walk the dog for us.
Thomas: Mary my dressed in black, silver bun all down her back.
Thomas: High low, tips her toes, she broke a needle and she can't sew.
Thomas: Walking the dog, and guess who's walking the dog.
Thomas: Bong, Bong Bong.
Thomas: If you don't know how to do it, I'll show you how to walk the dog, come on now, come on now.
Interviewer: Walk the dog.
Thomas: Mary my dressed in black, silver bun all down her back.
Thomas: High low, tips her toe, she broke a needle and she can't sew.
Thomas: Walking the dog, hmm ting ting.
Thomas: Guess who's walking the dog, ba ba ba boom bah.
Thomas: If you don't know how to do it I show you how to walk the dog.
Thomas: Come on now, come on now, come on, come on.
Interviewer: When you're ready.
Thomas: I believe, believe my … I'm going to get me somebody break up my happy home, oh yeah.
Thomas: Now, there come hell baby, come go hppyome with me.
Thomas: Oh we got it now.
Thomas: Come to me baby, come go home with me.
Thomas: I kind of make you happy, happier than a girl can be.
Thomas: Ohh shuck.
Thomas: Ah yeah.