REAL GONE
He Came In Peace
Indiana soul man Timmy Thomas, who asked Why Can’t We Live Together, left us on March 11.
Teach the children: Timmy Thomas, soul singer, educator, conciliator.
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USING JUST his Lowrey organ and its built-in drumbox as accompaniment, Timmy Thomas delivered one of the most quietly authoritative peace and racial unity anthems of the 20th century. Why Can’t We Live Together, which captured the US anti-war mood of the time, also provided Thomas with his first hit record when it reached the US R&B Number 1, pop Top 3 and UK Number 12 in February 1973.
Thomas, a music teacher, was preparing lessons when he came up with the idea for the song in ’72. “Walter Cronkite’s report on the Vietnam war came on and when I heard the death toll, it was heartbreaking,” he related to MOJO 40 years after the event. “I said to myself, Why can’t we live together? And there it was.”
One of 12 siblings, Evansville, Indiana’s Timothy Earle Thomas was born on November 13, 1944, the son of a minister, and got his first break at 10 playing organ in his father’s church. At 13, he helmed his first jazz band, then at 18 won a scholarship to the Stan Kenton jazz clinic at Indiana University where his tutors included Cannonball Adderley and Donald Byrd. While studying for a degree in Music at Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, he joined doo wop/soul group Phillip And The Faithfuls, who recorded 1964’s Love Me for Goldwax Records. He became the Memphis label’s in-house keyboardist, backing James Carr, OV Wright, The Ovations and others. He debuted as a solo singer with 1967 45s Have Some Boogaloo and It’s My Life. In 1970 he moved to Miami where he taught at the Florida Memorial University and opened Timmy’s Lounge, one of the first Black-owned bars in the beach area.