Leon Thomas  

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"Many vocalists of the early 1970s found themselves in the world of spiritual, roots-oriented, consciousness jazz: Dee Dee Bridgewater, Jean Carn, Jeanne Lee, Sherry Scott, Andy Bey, and others. But none exemplified the creativity of the music like singer/percussionist Leon Thomas."-- Ian Scott Horst [1]

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Amos Leon Thomas Jr. (October 4, 1937 – May 8, 1999), known professionally as Leon Thomas, was an American jazz and blues vocalist, born in East St. Louis, Illinois, and known for his bellowing glottal-stop style of free jazz singing in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Contents

Appraisal

Thomas has been called the "John Coltrane of jazz vocalists". According to music essayist and yodel expert Bart Plantenga, he combined scat singing, vocalese techniques from African tradition, and a unique approach to yodeling, "performing ritualistic vocals infused by spiritual quests, soul music, and Pygmy yodeling techniques." Thomas's extension of the anthropological "verbal energy"—"whenever his Pygmy-yodel-scat erupted from the opening at the top of his larynx"—returns the listener back to "Pygmy yodeling not only via ethnomusicological investigation but via ur-soul, or back-to-Africa spiritual pilgrimage", Plantenga said.

Discography

As leader

As sideman

With Pharoah Sanders

With Santana

With others

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Leon Thomas" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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