Kid Thomas (1896–1987), born Thomas Valentine, was an American jazz trumpeter and

bandleader A bandleader is the leader of a music group such as a rock or pop band or jazz quartet. The term is most commonly used with a group that plays popular music as a small combo or a big band, such as one which plays jazz, blues, rhythm and blues or ...

. Kid Thomas was born in Reserve, Louisiana and came to New Orleans in his youth. In the early 1920s, he gained a reputation as a hot trumpet man. Starting in 1926 he led his own band, for decades based in the New Orleans suburb of Algiers, Louisiana. The band was long popular with local dancers. Kid Thomas had perhaps the city's longest lasting old-style traditional jazz dance band. Unlike many other musicians, Thomas was unaffected by the influence of

Louis Armstrong Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several era ...

and later developments of jazz, continuing to play in his distinctive hot,

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

y, sometimes percussive style. His style was that which is characterized often as, "New Orleans Jazz", in order to differentiate it from the influences that arose from other parts of the country through the years. He was always open to playing the popular tunes of the day (even into the

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era) as he thought any good dance bandleader should do, but he played everything in a style of a New Orleans dance hall of the early 1920s. Kid Thomas started attracting a wider following with his first recordings in the 1950s. His band played regularly at Preservation Hall from the 1960s through the 1980s. Kid Thomas also toured extensively for the Hall, including a Russian tour, and was often a guest at European clubs and festivals, working with various local bands as well as his own. During the 1960s Kid Thomas recorded extensively for the Jazz Crusade label both with his own band and with Big Bill Bissonnette's Easy Riders Jazz Band. He made more than 20 tours with the Easy Riders in the U.S. Northeast. In the mid 1980s, as Kid Thomas's strength started to wane, Preservation Hall management brought in Wendell Brunious, at first as second trumpet. Brunious took over most of the trumpet playing in Kid Thomas's final year or so, although Kid Thomas continued to lead the band and keep rhythm with a slap stick. He is not to be confused with the Chicago harmonica blues vocalist artist, Kid Thomas Watts.

Discography

* ''Kid Thomas and His Algiers Stompers'' (Riverside, 1960) * ''Kid Thomas-George Lewis Ragtime Stompers'' (G.H.B. Records, 1962) * ''Kid Thomas Valentine's Creole Jazz Band'' (American Music, 1993)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Valentine, Kid Thomas 1896 births 1987 deaths Jazz musicians from New Orleans American jazz trumpeters American male trumpeters American jazz bandleaders Dixieland trumpeters Riverside Records artists 20th-century American conductors (music) 20th-century trumpeters 20th-century American male musicians American male jazz musicians Preservation Hall Jazz Band members 20th-century African-American musicians