Oregon Music News

Chris Thomas King today / Photo by Karen Fox

Who is Chris Tomas King really? Most folks know him as the “Robert Johnson character” in O Brother Where Art Thou.” His dad owned “Tabby Thomas’ Blues Box” in Baton Rouge, one of the best Juke Joints in Louisiana. So he’s the real thing but his career has gone all over the place. A master of Delta Blues guitar, a compelling Blues singer, he turned away from them and got into Hip Hop…what he called “21st Century Blues.”

Apparently he had some very bad experiences trying to pull the Blues into the new century. The result was two uneven Soul/Blues/Hip Hop albums, parts of which were brilliant and other parts which fell flat. The Blues Police had been harassing him over the direction in which he was going. In one of his songs he wrote:

“I don’t give a damn what the purists say/they wouldn’t know the Blues if it bit ‘em anyway. This is the Blues of the twenty-first century and I don’t give a damn if ya can’t get wit me!”

That was then. He was emotionally damaged by the flood in New Orleans and left the country.

Today he sat on the Workshop Stage and sang “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” and it was just fine.

But don’t think that King has lost any of his social conscience. He’s the man who started a song with, “KKK took off the white sheets…and became the police/so don’t get stopped on a dark end street or you’re gonna get beat!”

Today he sang a song he wrote for a soldier in Iraq who sent him an email about his situation there. The soldier’s girlfriend was his “Little Magnolia,” so King wrote the tune “When Magnolias Bloom.” That’s when the soldier promised to come home, even though he was skeptical about making it.

So today Chris Thomas King is no longer the young guitar slinger. He’s looking like his dad and dresses sharp as a tack. He still has much to say, he’s just more mature about it.

See him again Monday, July 5, 3pm, at the Credit Union Stage

Oregon Music News is happy to be a sponsor of the 2010 Safeway Waterfront Blues Festival. Visit our booth in the Delta Music Experience Louisiana Pavilion near the Oregonian Stage…free Clear Wi-fi and CTL computers to use.