Gordon Thomas (outsider musician)

Gordon Thomas in New York City's Times Square

Gordon Thomas is a singer/songwriter/jazz trombonist from New York City who recorded a series of self-financed albums of his own optimistically idiosyncratic music, which he often gave away for free.

After laboring in obscurity for decades, Thomas achieved minor cult-figure status when his recordings were discovered and circulated by far-flung collectors of outsider music - music performed by social outsiders who have little or no connection to the mainstream music business. In 2005, at the age of 89, Thomas was the subject of a documentary film, "Everything's Coming My Way: The Life and Music of Gordon Thomas," by Montreal filmmakers Stacey DeWolfe and Malcolm Fraser.

Biography

Gordon Thomas was born in Bermuda in 1916. His family immigrated to New York when Thomas was three. For a brief time in the 1940s, he played trombone in Dizzy Gillespie's band - until more skilled musicians returned home after completing their military service in World War II. "When the better musicians came back, that was it for my music career," Thomas told the Toronto Star in 2003. "I wasn't as good as those top-notch guys. So I took a lot of different jobs, looking after people's houses and such. I didn't start making my music again until the 1960s, but I haven't stopped since then."

Thomas recorded independently for 40 years, often giving away the albums as gifts. Gradually, duplicate cassette tapes of his songs began to circulate widely among collectors of "outsider music." Very little was known about the singer, however. When friends of filmmakers DeWolfe and Fraser played a tape for them in 2001, they decided to search for information about Thomas and to document their quest on film. After a year-long effort, they tracked him down "almost by accident," Fraser told Bermuda's Royal Gazette newspaper in 2005. "Somebody gave us a cassette that Gordon had made and it was pretty recent. That's when we realised he was still alive," Fraser said. "The cassette had the phone number of a studio. We'd just got back from shooting and, on a lark, I decided to phone the studio and see if they knew anything. Gordon was actually there."

With their search ended, DeWolfe and Fraser decided to focus their documentary on Mr. Thomas' life. "Everything’s Coming My Way: The Life and Music of Gordon Thomas" debuted at the Bermuda International Film Festival in March 2005.

References

In his 2000 book, "Songs In The Key Of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music," New Jersey-based radio host and music historian Irwin Chusid includes a brief reference to Gordon Thomas and his music:

"Charming, albeit incredibly clumsy singer and lyricist backed by competent jazz sidemen who probably owed him favors. Thomas played trombone with Dizzy Gillespie in the 1940s. Decades later he recorded perhaps a half-dozen LPs on his own Samhot label, featuring his joyful, loony-tuneless vocals. ... Has a strange fascination with the word 'good' - as a qualitative measure, it occurs in his lyrics with alarming frequency."

External links

• www.gordonthomas.com Official Web site about Gordon Thomas and documentary film "Everything's Coming My Way"
• The Royal Gazette, Bermuda Article about Gordon Thomas and documentary film
• Montreal Mirror Article about Gordon Thomas from Montreal Mirror
• Songs in the Key of Z Irwin Chusid's outsider music project