Leon Thomas & Santana

This Pharoah Sanders of the vocal world was born in East St. Louis, Illinois in 1937 (4th October) and studied music at Tennesseee State University, eventually moving to New York City in 1958. Legend has it that as a kid he even encountered Armando Peraza in a club in East St. Louis and jammed with the Cuban master!

Other early sessions included work with names like Count Basie, Randy Weston, Roland Kirk and Oliver Nelson before linking up with Pharoah Sanders for a partnership that continues to entrance listeners today. Leon recorded on two of Pharoahís most renowned classicsKarma (1969) and Jewels Of Thought (1970) and his vocals on the cuts "The Creator Has A Master Plan" and "Hum-Allah" have entered into legend. Just as Sonny Sharrock's startling guitar was the unique foil for Pharoah's slashing saxophone, so Leon Thomas had the virtuosity, intensity and blinding originality to keep up with Sanders. It was on these recordings that Leon revealed his unique vocal gift which might best be described as kind of scat-yodelling, offbeat and wonderful sounds which seem to well up from his inner being.

Many readers will have wondered where the yodelling comes from and what it's all about! Leon Thomas recounted in a recent interview with Straight No Chaser how he injured his mouth and was unable to sing but still made a gig, when it came to his turn to scat the sound just came out. In his own words : "The ancestors had arrived and I realised they had given me what we call throat articulation. I call it Soularfone, it can never be perfected. Sometimes I reach for it and it ain't there. It surprises me. The pygmies call it Umbo Weti. This voice is not me, my voice is ancient. This person you see before you is controlled by ego but my voice is egoless." So, the voice is related to the language used by pygmies to sing to the forest asking forgiveness as they entered to search for food.

Having really made his name with Pharoah, Leon was ready for a solo career and the legendary Flying Dutchman label stepped in with a deal. This label was launched by the equally legendary Bob Thiele, the engineer and producer who had produced so many of John Coltrane's Impulse! classics. Flying Dutchman really represented total freedom and support for the artist and Thomas responded to this environment with a series of great albums.

He started with the majestic Spirits Known And Unknown (1969--a must have disc for Santana fans) which included many tunes that have reverberated throughout Carlos Santana's career like "One" and "Malcolm's Gone" (Santana played "One" live throughout 1987--"If we all could love one another..." etc.--and he used the main theme from "Malcolm's Gone" as an intro to "Mandela" (88/89/90) as well as occasionally playing it as a complete piece).

More classics appeared on 1970's The Leon Thomas Album not least the blues "Um-um-um" which turned up in "Free Form Funkafide Filth" and in the Santana live set in 1973. The mood piece "Pharoahís Tune (The Journey)" seems now to be a spiritual ancestor of Caravanserai. A couple of engaging live albums followed before the release of two excellent albums, Blues And The Soulful Truth (1972) and Full Circle (1973); the first of these was an up blues-based LP full of vivacity and humour which included a vocal take of "Gypsy Queen" [the Gabor Szabo song now a Santana standard--ed.] which is a testament to Thomas' invention. By the time of Full Circle it almost seemed inevitable that Leon would join Santana: this album includes a great cover of "Just In Time To See The Sun" and other great tracks like "It's My Life I'm Fighting For" and "Balance To Life". Be in no doubt, Carlos Santana and Mike Shrieve were plugged into these albums big time and they have proved to be a lasting influence on Santana. All these albums are very much worth hearing.

Thomas' profile was very high in the free-jazz scene as witnessed by dates with high profile figures in the movement like Ornette Coleman, Roland Kirk and Archie Shepp but he was also catching the ear of some of the jazz greats including Louis Armstrong and Johnny Hodges. In one of the most curious but exhilarating combinations in jazz, Leon Thomas appeared on Louis Armstong's last album and cut a version of "The Creator Has A Master Plan" with the father of the genre.

Always having been a big fan of the New York "Soul-Jazz" scene, Carlos Santana thought of inviting Leon Thomas to join the band. Carlos told Melody Maker how it happened : "I was in a restaurant in New York with my wife and I went over to the jukebox and there was this record by Leon Thomas and just then I decided to look him up and see if he wanted to join the band. When I called him he said he had just had a dream about me. I told him we were going on a tour of Japan and he said he'd always wanted to go to Japan, so he joined."

Ian Scott Horst, a Leon Thomas aficionado and expert from New York City, tracked Leon down for us recently and sent us a letter reporting what had happened. During the course of the evening Ian asked Leon how he came to join Santana, this is what Ian wrote: "I spent yesterday afternoon with Leon Thomas and his lady friend Vienna. We had a very lovely time....what a nice man. I asked him how he got hooked up with Santana. He told me a wonderful story about being out on the street near his old apartment in Harlem: An older woman told him to look up at the sky, and there was a double rainbow. He rushed up to his apartment and told his wife to look at it, and then picked up his son and held him out on the balcony looking up at the double rainbow, while all the while his wife was saying to be careful and not drop the baby off the terrace. Then the phone rang and it was Carlos Santana on the line asking him to join his band....He thought about it a bit, and I guess over the next days discussed terms with Carlos Santana and Mike Shrieve. Apparently the offer was eventually quite satisfactory and he signed up; he described his time with Santana as one of the high points of his life. He also told me a brief story about being in Nicaragua in 1973 with Santana on tour as personal guests of the then-dictator Somoza and how Jose Chepito Areas brought along two rolls royces as gifts for family there, under appreciated since the roads were in such bad shape. He's not in touch with Carlos now....and said he would like to be very much."

Santana's 1973 tour was possibly the greatest in the band's history and Thomas added a massive gravitas to Santana that helped to shoot them into the Latin-soul-jazz stratosphere. Thomas had the role of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist; for instance, as well as the maracas he is credited with on the Lotus sleeve he brought a variety of whistles, flutes and even conch shells to the live Santana sound. Unfortunately, Lotus also excludes many of the Thomas vocals that were heard on the tour: these included a vocal version of Sanders' "Japan" from Karma, "Um-um-um" and "The Creator Has Master Plan," all of which left Santana delighted to be at the cutting edge of New York street-spiritual jazz. "Mr Udo" from Lotus gives a glimpse into a free-jazz setting for Santana with Thomas scatting his incredible patterns in a pretty "far out" style that must have left many Santana fans gasping.

The pace of the tour was too much for Thomas and he left Santana at the end of the year and he entered a downward spiral of indulgence and indolence that lasted quite a few years. He toured Europe with Freddie Hubbard in 1979, a partnership that spawned the enjoyable A Piece Of Cake (1980) and later in the 1980s he resumed his relationship with Pharoah Sanders and cut tracks with him on the albums Shukuru (1983) and Oh Lord, Let Me Do No Wrong (1987). Shukuru included what might be the best Leon Thomas composition, the exquisite "Sun Song" which is a paean to meditation but manages to transmit feelings of peace, tranquillity and uplift to the listener. Oh Lord, Let Me Do No Wrong was more of a blues work out and found Thomas in great voice and contributing new tunes like "If It Wasn't For A Woman." The most recent Leon Thomas release came in 1993 with the release of Precious Energy, a live date recorded in conjunction with sax player Gary Bartz. This includes a mammoth version of the great "Sun Song."

The story gets a bit sad after this with Leon descending further into the world of drugs and self-abuse until shaking himself out of it in 1994 and recording new material for an album which has, unfortunately, yet to be released. Ian Scott Horst heard the album on the visit to Leon's apartment: "He played for me the tape of the album that he was working on a couple years ago. The small label that started the project has not apparently been very interested in finishing it and releasing it, but it is an absolutely extraordinary piece of music, full of spirit and very much Leon Thomas. I need to make it my personal challenge to try and figure out how to get the record released....I have no clue how but I'm going to try." Late in 1997 Leon was playing live again, backed by a small trio at a very very old jazz club in Harlem. Leon now wears a hearing aid so his singing isn't always perfect, but reports said that when it was good it was incredible. His set comprised a mix of blues, jazz standards and a couple of his own tunes.

Thomas' impact on Santana is inestimable but it could hardly have lasted longer than it did. He had his own name and his own career and the "madness" that attended a band like Santana on tour, even in 1973, was too much for him. What is clear is that any Santana fan who wants to understand the band really has to hear Leon Thomas' solo work and understand where it was coming from and what Carlos was trying to achieve by inviting him to join the band. In 1973 Santana wanted to take what Pharoah Sanders and Leon Thomas symbolised (the cutting edge of radical black music) and incorporate that mood into Santana which had always been a highly politically symbolic band. Don't forget that Carlos Santana has always aligned himself spiritually with black consciousness as a movement and related to it and "Malcolm's Gone", a tribute to the black Muslim leader and in a sense, his generation's Toussaint L'Overture, means as much to Carlos now as it did in 1970. Leon Thomas encapsulated the blues, black radicalism and spirituality and, thus, he was perfect for Santana and highlights the fact that for Santana, radical jazz, politics and spirituality are equal bed partners with the blues!