Soul Series: The Bearcat - The Beauty and the Sweet Stank of Success
- by Joe Nolan
Rufus Thomas
A local legend in Memphis, Rufus “Bearcat” Thomas was a DJ and the entertaining MC of the local talent shows and amateur nights held at the Palace and the Handy theaters. Some biographies actually credit Thomas with discovering B.B. King at just such an event. Thomas cut a number of novelty-blues sides for various labels including the occasional song for Sam Phillips at Sun. Thomas’ Bearcat moniker is a reference to his song “Bearcat” for which Thomas is credited with Sun’s very first hit record in 1953. The song was an answer to Big Momma Thornton’s hit “Hound Dog.” This was not the first or the last time that Rufus would invest his musical persona with strange, funny impersonations of wild animals and barnyard creatures.
Born a sharecropper’s son in Cayce, Miss., in 1917, Rufus and his family moved north to Memphis when he turned two years old. The young man made his entertainment debut at the age of six when he played a frog in a school play. By the time he turned 10, Thomas was an accomplished tap dancer, performing as an amateur at Booker T. Washington High School.
After a short-lived attempt at a college education, lack of funds found Thomas joining up with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, touring the South with the all-black revue. He eventually left the road in 1940 to tend the boilers at the same textile plant where he would work for the next 22 years. He began his on-air responsibilities in 1951 at WDIA, “The Mother Station of the Negroes.”
Stopping by the Capitol Theater that night, the self-proclaimed “World’s Oldest Teenager” was 43 years old, sharp-dressed as always, and animatedly talking a mile-a-minute to anyone who would listen about his latest idea for setting the entertainment world on its head.
Thomas and Stewart knew each other from a previous meeting, when the always enterprising “Bearcat” had pitched a single by the Vel Tones to the Satellite label before they had found their new home at the Theater. The record had failed to make a mark, but it was the first R&B side released on Satellite, portending what was to become the label’s lasting identity.
Thomas’ latest pitch involved recording a new song he had written as a duet with his beautiful 17-year-old daughter Carla, then a senior at Hamilton High School. Although still a kid, Carla already had 10 years of show business under her belt through her frequent performances with the Teen Town Singers.
Thomas’ song was entitled simply, “I Love You,” and the recording would mark the debuts of two of Stax’ most recognizable artists, as well as introducing Booker T. Jones into the back-up band at the studio. Jones played baritone sax on the tune, the organ duties handled by Thomas’ son Marvell.
After the song was recorded, everybody scrambled to get it on the air. Stewart assigned part of the songs publishing to John Richbourg, a Nashville DJ at WLAC with a proven ability to break R&B songs into the regional market. Thomas pulled every string available to him and managed to get the tune on the air in far-flung, exotic locales like San Francisco.
The song was an unqualified success. It sold over 20,000 copies, at which point “I Love You” captured the attention of Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records in New York. Atlantic and Satellite shared the same Memphis distributor: Music Sales. The distributor’s manager, Leon McLemore, made contact with Stewart and the resulting deal gave Atlantic what Satellite interpreted as a five-year option on any more duets cut by the Thomases. Stewart and Axton disagree on whether the big label paid $1000 or $2000 for this privilege, but one thing was clear, Satellite was going to be an R&B label.
“Once we had the success with Rufus and Carla, it was as though we cut off a whole part of our lives that had existed previously. We never looked back from there.”
- Jim Stewart, from Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music
Sources:
Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music, Harper and Row, 1986
James Dickerson’s Goin’ Back to Memphis, Simon and Schuster Macmillan, 1996
Michael Haralambos’ Right on: From Blues to Soul in Black America, Drake Publishers, 1975
Respect Yourself: The Stax Story, documentary film, produced by Tremolo Productions, Concord Music Group and Thirteen/WNET New York, for PBS’ Great Performances, 2007
Joe Nolan is a poet, musician and freelance journalist in Nashville, TN. Nolan writes about visual art for the journal, Number, published by the University of Memphis. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.