George Varga
The San Diego Union-Tribune
SAN DIEGO — Earl Thomas was just about on top of the world — literally — when he decided to retire from music after his November 2019 performance at the Dark Season Blues Festival in Svalbard, Norway, just 500 miles below the Arctic Circle.
“There are polar bear warning signs there and we took a dog sled ride. It was incredible!” said the internationally acclaimed San Diego vocal dynamo and songwriter.
“As I was standing under the aurora borealis, I thought to myself: ‘I’ve been everywhere, and I’ve done everything I wanted to do in music. I’m going to retire now.’ That was three months before the pandemic.”
But Thomas — who counts Etta James, Ike Turner and Tom Jones among the legends who have recorded his songs — had another compelling reason that fueled his decision to leave music behind. He felt like a fraud, artistically speaking.
The year before his 2019 Dark Season show in Norway, an acquaintance asked the now-63-year-old Thomas why he had never won any honors at the national Blues Music Awards (formerly known as the W.C. Handy Awards). The answer provided a revelation for the Tennessee native, whose hometown of Pikeville has a population of 1,824.
“I answered that I didn’t know why I’d never won one of those awards and that I didn’t care,” Thomas recalled. “Because those awards are for people who didn’t come from the blues or from the culture that created it. They were awarded based on how well they imitated someone who did come from the blues and that culture.
“But then it occurred to me that I’m just as much of an imitator as anyone else. Even though I have the (blues) vocabulary and grew up in a musical family, I’m still an imitator. And I suddenly felt like an absolute fraud, knowing I’d been imitating my grandparents’ music and had never suffered the injustices they suffered (as Black Americans) during the Jim Crow era.”
This realization prompted a dramatic career shift.
In late 2018, Thomas resumed work as a San Diego dental technician after a four-decade hiatus. It’s a job he first did while stationed here in 1978 as a U.S. Navy Third Class Petty Officer. And it’s a job that supported him while he majored in music at Humboldt State University in the 1980s.
From 2018 to 2019, Thomas continued to fulfill his blues concert bookings in Europe and Brazil, where he typically toured several times a year. When he wasn’t on the road during that time, he worked here as a dental technician — a day gig he still has now.
After his late 2019 festival date in Norway, Thomas was through with music. That held true until his unexpected return to the stage this year at Humphreys Backstage Lounge, which in January hosted the debut of Earl Thomas with Sister Leola & The Gospel Ambassadors.
It sold out two weeks in advance. So did his return engagements in February and March. Now, thanks to buzz generated by online video clips of his performances at Humphreys, the charismatic singer is booked for a Nov. 12 concert with his gospel revue at the London Jazz Festival.
But getting Thomas to agree to perform at Humphreys at all — even for the venue’s first-ever Sunday gospel brunch concert — was not easy.
“We called Earl in October 2021, and he told us he was retired, period,” said Humphreys Director of Entertainment Shauna Aguirre.
After nearly a year of calls and talks, Aguirre won Thomas over. They hit a snag when he handpicked the instrumentalists and backing singers for The Gospel Ambassadors.
“None of them could do it because they all had Sunday morning church gigs!” Aguirre said. “We moved the start of the brunch to 12:30 noon so they could make it.”
The result is a full-circle return for Thomas, whose 2006 album, “Plantation Gospel,” honored his rural Tennessee music roots. So did two subsequent European tours with a gospel vocal quartet. But he viewed these as enjoyable detours, not an ultimate destination.
“I didn’t want to pursue it. I had other commitments and I hadn’t had my gospel epiphany yet,” said Thomas, who will perform this fall at the Belly Up.
“The reason I’m doing this now is for my family and ancestry. These songs were taught to me by my mother and her mother. They were passed down through several generations and I get to be the representative of my entire family. In the Jim Crow era, the only joy they could really experience was this music. And they used it, 100 percent, to create joy. That’s why they called it ‘jubilee singing’ — to make a joyful noise unto the Lord — and they did.
“I felt like I was phony doing the blues. Now that I’m doing gospel, I feel completely legit. This is where I live. And now, I’ll be saluting my family’s legacy on a world stage at the London Jazz Festival.”
Thomas’ Nov. 12 festival performance will be at Ronnie Scott’s — London’s most storied jazz club — where he will record a live album. This marks another full-circle moment for him.
“When I was 14 in Pikeville, I used to listen all the time to the (1974 Ella Fitzgerald) album ‘Ella in London,’ which was recorded at Ronnie Scott’s,” Thomas said.
“I would stand in our living room and pretend I was singing at Ronnie Scott’s. Now, 49 years later, l actually will sing at Ronnie Scott’s — where I’ve seen Chaka Khan, Betty Carter and Wynton Marsalis perform — and I’ll be recording there. It really is a dream come true.”
Thomas calculates it will cost $26,000 for recording costs, airfare and hotel accommodations for him and his 10-piece band to go to London. On Tuesday, he’ll launch an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to help finance the trip. Contributors will have access to songs on “Church Music,” Thomas’ soon-to-be-completed studio album.
“It might cost me a fortune out of my own pocket to do this show in London,” he said. “But I’m doing this for my family, and all they stood for, so that I can stand now.”
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