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All Music Guide:
Texas songster Henry Thomas remains a relative stranger who made some great recordings, then returned to obscurity. Evidence suggests he was an itinerant street musician, a musical hobo who rode the rails across Texas and possibly to the World's Fairs in St. Louis and Chicago just before and after the turn of the century. Most agree he was the oldest African-American folk artist to produce a significant body of recordings. His projected 1874 birth date would predate Charley Patton by a good 17 years. Like Patton and a handful of other musicians generally termed songsters (including John Hurt, Jim Jackson, Mance Lipscomb, Furry Lewis, and Leadbelly), Thomas' repertoire bridged the 19th and 20th centuries, providing a compelling glimpse into a wide range of African-American musical genres. The 23 songs he cut for Vocalion between 1927 and 1929 include a spiritual, ballads, reels, dance songs, and eight selections titled blues. Obviously dance music, his songs were geared to older dance styles shared by black and white audiences.
Thomas' sound, like his repertoire, is unique. He capoed his guitar high up the neck and strummed it in the manner of a banjo, favoring dance rhythm over complex fingerwork. On many of his pieces, he simultaneously played the quills or panpipes, a common but seldom-recorded African-American folk instrument indigenous to Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Combining the quills, a limited-range melody instrument, with his banjo-like strummed guitar produced one of the most memorable sounds in American folk music. For example, his lead-in on "Bull Doze Blues" still worked as a hook when recycled 40 years later by blues-rockers Canned Heat in their version of "Going Up the Country." "Ragtime Texas," as Thomas was known, provides a welcome inroad to 19th century dance music, but his music is neither obscure nor merely educational: it has a timeless quality -- and while it may be an acquired taste, once you catch on to it, you're hooked.
Wikipedia:
Henry Jackson Thomas, Jr. (born September 9, 1971) is an American actor and musician. He has appeared in more than 40 films and is best known for his role as Elliott in the 1982 Steven Spielberg film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
Early life
Thomas was born an only child in San Antonio, Texas, the son of Carolyn L. (née Davis), a homemaker, and Henry Jackson Thomas, a hydraulic machinist. In San Antonio he attended East Central High School, in the ECISD district, and Blinn College in Bryan, Texas.
Career
Acting career
Shortly after his appearance in E.T., Thomas also made some appearances in commercials for the Intellivision console by Mattel, alongside George Plimpton, whom he always referred to as "Mr. Intellivision". In all these commercials, Plimpton always asked what Thomas's name is, but is never mentioned. According to Intellivision Products, Inc., Atari threatened to sue Mattel if Thomas was identified in the commercials, since Atari was securing the rights for the Atari 2600 E.T. video game at the time.
After E.T., Thomas returned to Texas, occasionally acting in film and on TV while attending school.
Thomas returned to film in the late 1980s and early 1990s and began to prove himself in adult roles, most notably as the younger version of Anthony Perkins' Norman Bates character in Psycho IV: The Beginning. His most prominent adult role to date was as Samuel Ludlow in 1994's Legends of the Fall. He is currently both an actor and musician. He starred in the 2011 film The Last Ride, in the lead role as Hank Williams Sr..
Music
Thomas wrote songs, sang, and played guitar for the San Antonio, Texas band The Blue Heelers from the mid to late '90s. Although the band was never signed to a record label, their self-produced album Twister was warmly received and enjoyed statewide radio play. Moving to Los Angeles in 1998, the band dissolved, but Thomas continued to write and record songs. In 1998, his song "Truckstop Coffee" (recorded with the Blue Heelers) appeared on V2's soundtrack to the film Niagara, Niagara in which Henry Thomas also acted. In 2003, Thomas worked with Nikki Sudden on the music for Mika Kaurismaki's film Honey Baby which featured four original songs written and performed by Thomas as the fictitious musician Tom Brackett. An album was in the works, but their collaboration was ended by Sudden's death in 2006. Thomas continues to live and play in the LA area with the band Farspeaker.
