KID THOMAS AND MAC REBENNACK REMIND US TO SWING MADLY WITH THESE BLISTERING SHAKERS FROM 1959.

A young Mac Rebennack aka Dr. John

Behold “Rockin’ This Joint To-Nite” and “Storm Warning”

Both of these shakers will rattle your marbles if you play them loudly and you should play them loudly, Dear Reader, so beware the jostled immies in your noggins. Both songs travel to us from 1959. The musicians who recorded them led vastly different lives. One died in obscurity and tragically at that. The other reached considerable heights. Nonetheless, both tunes predict mischief and both deliver. Amply. They deserve our devotion so let’s get to jumping! Shall we?

Kid Thomas – “Rockin’ This Joint To-Nite” 

The man who would eventually call himself Kid Thomas was born Louis Thomas Watts in Mississippi, circa 1934. He moved to Chicago with his family at a young age and eventually began gigging in South Side clubs. In 1957, he convinced the mighty King Records to record several songs but the company only released one of them on its subsidiary label, Federal. This one single did not chart or generate any recognition for the harmonica-playing bluesman. Having gotten little traction in the Chicago music scene, Kid Thomas relocated to Los Angeles in 1959 where he cut “Rockin’ This Joint To-Nite” b/w “You Are an Angel” on a micro-label, Transcontinental Records.

Easily one of the roughest-sounding, hardest-charging songs of its generation, the lyrics for “Rockin’ This Joint To-Nite” may have been hollered in emulation of Little Richard, but the side occupies its own terrain somewhere between the jump blues efforts of Chris Powell and Jimmy Preston, the Chicago electric blues idiom, and the proto heavy metal developed by the controversial Pat Hare in the mid-1950s. The ferocious shouting, amped-up harmonica, and relentless guitar will rock the joint to-nite, to-morrow nite, and every other nite. Unfortunately, “Rockin’ This Joint To-Nite” did not achieve commercial success.

Kid Thomas had few additional recording opportunities in Los Angeles and, by 1969, was working in L.A. as a landscaper. In that capacity, he accidentally struck a boy with his lawnmowing equipment in 1969 and killed him. A few months later, the boy’s father waited for Kid Thomas / Louis Watts outside a courthouse and shot him to death. There is just too much sadness in this outcome to swing this concluding note upward, but the ferocity of Kid Thomas’s record nevertheless ought to remind us about living large, larger-than-life, while we still have the opportunity to do so.

Mac Rebennack – “Storm Warning”

Yes, someone recorded a song under the absolutely devastating, winning name of Mac Rebennack. Born Malcolm John Rebennack, Jr., the fellow in question would go on to call himself by a moniker—Dr. John—you may very well recognize. A New Orleans native, Dr. John began his recording career as a teenager, and would come to blend the rich Nola music he inherited along with voodoo, psychedelia, and other genres. Eventually, he became a member of the famous group of session musicians known as The Wrecking Crew, a winner of six Grammys, and an inductee into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. His albums such as Gris-Gris (1968) and Gumbo (1972) are well-known, important, and have received critical praise. We here at Blood And Gutstein especially appreciate Gumbo because he included a version of the folk song—“Little Liza Jane”—that features America’s favorite Poor Gal

Dr. John cut the instrumental “Storm Warning” as a seventeen-year-old guitarist in New Orleans. He molded it in the “Bo Diddley vein” and the song would go on to become a regional hit. We can understand why. First of all, Dr. John / Mac Rebennack discredits the entire notion of “the calm before the storm.” The song serves the dual purpose of predicting the “house rocking” to come as well as actually rocking the house. A “storm warning” generated by a New Orleans musician more than likely refers to a hurricane, and in this case, it’s the two saxophonists—Lee Allen on tenor and Alvin “Red” Tyler on bari—who do the hurricane-force blowing. In fact, Tyler really jumps the piece about halfway through. He unleashes some muscular phrasing upon the groovy ladder that Rebennack, et. al., offer via guitar, bass, keys, and drums.

As a teenager, Rebennack obeyed an impulse to rock hard. He didn’t reinvent instrumental rock ‘n’ roll with this piece but, at the same time, he substantially swung the proceedings. He also chose saxophone as the soloing instrument in a genre that was increasingly turning to the electric guitar for this kind of statement. Of course, coming from New Orleans, Dr. John would naturally choose a horn to represent the virtuosity of the soloist, a practice that another Nola musician—a cornetist / trumpeter named Louis Armstrong—established a few decades earlier and, in doing so, in establishing the importance of soloing, would change American music forever. 

Best Practices When Listening to These Songs

Dear Reader, we advise you to adopt the following protocols:
—Liquid refreshments (e.g., corn liquor) wouldn’t hurt, but swill these in moderation.
—Put on some sensible slacks! 
—Engage your core.
—Jump by squatting down low, then propelling yourself into the air. Repeat often.
—Above all else, invite your sweetie pie to join you. If you don’t have a sweetie pie, then invite a nice companion to join you. This hardy soul may—just may—turn into a sweetie pie, especially if you’ve observed all the other best practices given above. Oi.

Kid Thomas

Discographic Information

“Rockin’ This Joint To-Nite” A-side b/w B-side “You Are an Angel.” Transcontinental T-1012, Hollywood, Calif., 1959. Kid Thomas aka Louis Thomas Watts (vocals, harmonica). Other musicians, potentially including two guitars, drums, and any other instruments, unknown. Songwriting credit: Kid Thomas and Brad Atwood.

“Storm Warning” A-side b/w B-side Foolish Little Girl. Rex 1008, New Orleans, 1959. Likely personnel: Mac Rebennack aka Dr. John (guitar); Allen Toussaint (keyboards); Frank Fields (bass); Charles Williams (drums); Lee Allen (tenor sax); Alvin “Red” Tyler (baritone sax); and Melvin Lastie (trumpet). Other musicians, if any, unknown. Songwriting credit: Rebennack.

 
Sources of Information
Dr. John and Jack Rummel, Under a Hoodoo Moon, St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 1995
45cat page for “Storm Warning”
Album Liner notes page for a Dr. John anthology
Wikipedia page for Dr. John
Wikipedia page for Kid Thomas
AllMusic page for Kid Thomas
Bear Family Records page for Kid Thomas
Mike Leadbitter and Neil Slaven, Blues Records, January 1943 to December 1966, Hanover Books, 1968. (Contains session information for the 1959 Thomas recording.)