Remembering Tabby – Locals talk about the legacy of Ernest “Tabby” Thomas

Baton Rouge blues lost a legend this week. Ernest “Tabby” Thomas died early New Year’s Day. The blues musician was 84 years old.

Thomas is perhaps most known for opening Tabby’s Blues Box in Baton Rouge in the late 1970s. The venue started out at North Boulevard, then moved to Lafayette Street by 2000. The Blues Box closed in 2004 after Thomas suffered a stroke.

The Blues Box was the stomping ground for up-and-comers and veterans alike. On any given night, you could see someone like Henry Gray, Larry Garner, Gregg Wright or Lil Ray Neal performing for an appreciative crowd.

“It was our inner-city blues roadhouse,” Johnny Palazzotto, local music promoter, says. “Tabby’s Blues Box was the real thing, and so was he.”

Tab Benoit, a blues guitarist and songwriter from Houma, La., says Tabby’s was the place to play at the beginning of his career.

“Seems like everybody I know would tell me, ‘That was the blues club,'” Benoit says. “When I was starting, all I heard around here was, ‘You’ve got to go to Tabby’s. That’s where people play and listen to the blues.'”

At the Blues Box, Benoit played guitar for Thomas’ band and eventually landed the weekly Sunday night gig and a slot playing at Jazzfest alongside Thomas.

“When he got on the stage, everybody looked and listened,” Benoit says. “He was a real bluesman. He had this big character. It was entertaining all the time. There were never any dull moments. I never got bored hanging and talking with him.”

Thomas was one of the first to encourage Benoit to get out there and play the blues.

“I wasn’t getting a lot of encouragement at the time,” Benoit says. “He told me to come play at his club. I’m grateful for that. He’s always got a special place in my heart.”

Though the blues club was Thomas’ claim to fame, his style as a musician was second to none.

Reuben Williams, a former manager and longtime friend of Thomas, says he was one of the most original guitar players and songwriters to come out of Louisiana.

“[Thomas’] sound was so original,” Williams says. “It wasn’t like anything from Chicago. It wasn’t Louisiana. It was Tabby Thomas blues. It was this mix of ’50s-style music and a little bit of that swamp pop sound that Baton Rouge has. It was a style that nobody was touching.”

Maxine Crump, a founding member of the Baton Rouge Blues Foundation and CEO/President of Dialogue on Race Louisiana, says that when Thomas played, you knew he understood the blues’ deeper messages.

“Tabby treated blues like a gift he could share and that he did,” Crump says. “They don’t make many like Tabby. He gave effortlessly. He was such a staple of the blues that it was easy to take him for granted. But we have come to recognize that Tabby’s swamp blues is a gift he gave to all of us and for which I am certainly grateful.”

Thomas grew up in Old South Baton Rouge. He went to school and played football at McKinley High. He was married to his wife, Jocelyn, for more than 50 years. She passed away in 2005. He is survived by eight children and 20 grandchildren. His son, Chris Thomas King, is a Grammy-winning musician and actor who has appeared in O Brother, Where Art Thou? as well as Ray.