Pat Thomas

The following interview took place on February 6, 2008, on the Delta State University campus.

Hear audio clips from the interviews below.

Click here to download the entire transcript of the interview.

Student: What was the first music you remember listening to?
Pat: The first song? The first song that he [Pat’s father] really showed me was a country western song. It’s called, after the war was over, I was coming home to you. Saw your face in the rainbow, it made me think of you. We’ll build a home in the country, we’ll have a baby or two. We’ll name him after the rainbow because it reminds me of you. But it was a country western song he said he heard on the radio station, and he copied it off the radio and went home and played it.

Student: In your opinion, do Blues players from the Delta have a different sound to Blues players from other parts of Mississippi or other states?
Pat: Well, I think that the singing might be a little different, but I think all the Blues music is just about the same, but I think the sound, the voice, and everything might be a little different, but I think everybody got their own particular way of music.

Student: In your opinion, what is Blues?
Pat: Well, my father says there is lots of ways you can have the Blues. Okay, here’s the Blues. He said, if you’re working in the cotton field and ain’t making not that much money back then, that’s kinda like the Blues. But here’s the way he said you got the Blues—if you broke, you got the Blues. He said if you’re hungry, you got the Blues, and if you got a good woman and she quit you, you ain’t got nothing but the Blues. So it’s a lot of ways—like you can have a happy Blues, you can have a sad Blues, and then you can have a good, good Blues. So it’s a lot of ways to have the Blues.

Student: How did you begin to play the Blues?
Pat: Well, my father, we’d be at home, and he’d tell me, ‘you want to do a song with me?’ and I say, ‘I might as well, you know.’ And so he’d say, ‘You better get your guitar then and come on and play one cause I’m fitting to play me one.’ And then he had bought a Gene Autry guitar kind of like this, (he indicates his guitar) and so I get the other guitar. Me and him both sitting at home, I’d have to watch him. He’d tell me to watch him and he’d play a song and I’d watch him and see what he’d do then and I’d just go try to do it. I might not catch it the same time but, you know, as time went on, I caught it, kinda.

Pat: Well, I learned—it was kinda like what he said. He didn’t—he come up on kinda like the hard times. His uncle Joe used to charge him a dollar for playing his guitar. He’d get off work, he’d go pay him a dollar. He’d play it but he said if he hit it too hard he’d make him put it down. Time was hard back then and, he kind of come up on the, kind of like the slavery side, and, it was kind of like what I’m saying, he didn’t want us to see the hard times, he wanted us to have a better life.

Student: What do you remember about your father’s music?
Pat: Well, mostly the way—he singing, like, because, one song he sung about, he said, ‘You may be beautiful baby, but you sho gonna die someday. I need a little bit more of your loving, just before you pass away.’ It’s called the Bull Cow Blues. And, it’s just a whole lot of different songs that he sung, that they thought, when they was working in the cotton fields, you know, to sing. Like, he’d tell you about the time standing at the crossroads, or, I’m gonna get up in the morning, believe I’ll dust my broom. Well, he said if you’re gonna sing a song like, ‘I’m gonna get up in the morning, I believe I’ll dust my broom,’ well, that’s signaling to the other guy that you’re fitting to leave that plantation, cause the boss ain’t treating you right. You fitting to go somewhere else to stay, you fitting to move out of there cause the money ain’t right.

Student: What are you trying to express when you play the Blues?
Pat: Well, it’s an emotion, feeling. I think—I tell everybody mostly that it makes me feel that I’m making my father out of his grave, because he knows this music and he hears it.