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The Hit
Another chapter, another journey into the unknown; not even my oldies-radio-lovin’ wife had heard Timmy Thomas’ 1972 hit, “We Cant’ We Live Together.” That said, millions of young people have heard the tune without realizing it. (Quality foreshadowing…)
It opens with a percussive tapping. Pulses on an electric organ come in just over ten seconds in and proceeds to soar over it (or surf on it?) that sound. The longer the intro runs (it is not short), the more it feels thoughtful, even meditative, like an idea turning over in someone’s mind. The song continues - short, tense bursts from the electric organ here, some mellow grounding tones there - and then the vocals come in to pose the plaintive, troubled question: “Why Can’t We Live Together.” Call it a plea playing over a groove.
I’ll let Timmy Thomas tell the origin story. This comes from a 2015 interview with Spin Magazine on another big moment in his career:
“And then after that, put it on this little tape, and went to WEBF, which was a local radio station. And they played local artists then… they played it, and the phones lit up. They said ‘Man, who is that?’ And I did it as a one-man band! That was my foot playing bass, that was my left-hand playing guitar… Could never believe that as a one-man band, something like that would’ve been played that much. But I do believe that the world was ready to start changing a little bit. And that song made the change.”
One man alone in a room doing it all. Timmy Thomas was ahead of his time in a couple ways.
The Rest of the Story
Timothy E. Thomas came into this world in 1944, born in Indiana. He started in music with a band called Phillip & the Faithfuls, who released a string of singles in the mid-1960s (represented on the sampler by “Love Me” and “Rhythm Marie”) After that project dried up, he became a session musician in Memphis (and, from another source, a school administrator) while releasing more material on the side - e.g., “Have Some Boogaloo” and “It’s My Life” (snappy little cover) - on a local label called Goldwax Records. Thomas never stopped plugging away at his side gig; in fact, he went in even harder after another position in education moved him to Miami, Florida, opening a nightclub on the corner of 46th & Collins. Which is where things took off for him.
As he recalls on a 2016 episode of Nardwuar’s show, the inspiration for “Why Can’t We Live Together” hit Thomas one night as he watched Walter Kronkite talk about a day’s worth of casualties (his phrasing on that is impossible, but always consistent), and that one crystal-clear thought took shape in his mind. After turning his thought into a song, Thomas played it live at his nightclub and, as they say, the crowd went wild. With that reception at his back, Thomas recorded a demo of the song and passed it to a DJ at…WEDR(? who knows?) to get it on the air. The one thing everyone agrees on is that, immediately after it played, the phones lit up with people asking to know what it was and who sang it.
One person who heard it was Henry Stone, a distributor who ran a Florida outfit called TK Records. Based in Hialeah, FL, that label helped pioneer the disco sound with artists like the Hues Corporation’s (“Rock the Boat,” aka, my first disco memory) and most of what KC & the Sunshine Band put out into the world. Thomas heard potential in the song and, after toying with passing it off to Atlantic Records (“I was on a plane on my way up to New York to lease the single to them for national distribution when I said, ‘Fuck it. I can do this myself.'”; he didn’t think long), Stone signed Thomas to TK’s Glades imprint and made him (briefly) famous. It sold well, charted strong (#3 on the generic Billboard, #1 on the R&B), and it sent Thomas all over the world - and to one stop, in particular, that becomes relevant later on. When Thomas traveled to South Africa, he skipped past the infamous Sun City and became the first American artist to perform in Soweto (“Whether red, yellow, black, or white”). As he noted later with justifiable pride:
“Anywhere in the world that there was unrest, they called me in. I played the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa. I knew my music couldn’t change laws, but it could change hearts. And I never played a single segregated concert anywhere.”
As happened to every artist in this series, the spotlight turned away from Timmy Thomas. He continued releasing material through Glade - after 1972’s Why Can’t We Live Together came You’re the Song (I’ve Always Wanted to Sing) (1974), The Magician (1976), and Touch to Touch (1977) (plus a couple more later) - dropping a string of singles on both Glade and TK along with the way. He also produced for other artists on the Glade imprint and recorded with a few of them - e.g., a 1975 duet with Betty Wright on “It’s What They Can’t See” (could only find a different song; still, have a taste). An NPR piece recognized Thomas “a musical cornerstone of the local TK Records crowd, but a producer/songwriter for Betty Wright and Gwen McRae.” Thomas even returned to the (soul) charts in the mid-1980s with “Gotta Give a Little Love (Ten Years After),” but he remained a regional artist playing in a niche genre, not a man with a massive hit on the national charts…but his story had a couple twists left in it.
First, Drake sampled “Why Can’t We Live Together” for his 2015 hit, “Hotline Bling,” something I only mention because it gave Thomas a thrill (and gave him to a lift to release new material on Spotify); it had already inspired a handful of other artists to cover it - e.g., Sade, Steve Winwood, Santana, and Joan Osborne - and/or re-work it, e.g., MC Hammer. All that pales to invisibility next to the crowning moment of Timmy Thomas’ career, e.g., that one time when his hit enjoyed a star turn in South Africa’s first fair and open election:
“I was there for the voting in ‘93, ‘94, when Dr. Mandela [was elected president]. I played on the television, my song was the theme for the whole thing. I couldn’t believe it, man, that one song got me to go and play in 38 countries, all over the nation, all 50 states.”
It only took a little reading to make Timmy Thomas a very easy man to cheer for - and his comments on Drake and the changes he made to the tone and meaning of his song are just plain delightful. Unlike several artists in this series, he presents as more of a “normal” artist - i.e., someone who makes music that they like. He hopes people will respond to it, obviously, but this was a case of fame finding him while he was doing his own thing. Maybe that’s what made him a one-hit wonder, but Henry Stone once offered him a much better theory:
"Timmy, your major problem was what you said was so profound, that you could never back it up. Listen to what you said, you asked, ‘Why can’t we all in the world live together? No more wars, everybody wants peace, no matter what color, you’re still my brother.’ Now what are you gonna back that up with?”
Well…I mean, the South Africa thing was pretty cool…
About the Sampler
The hit made the sampler, of course, along with the two Phillip & the Faithful tracks noted above, but I pulled the rest from three of the albums Spotify made available - i.e., because it didn’t really turn my crank, I skipped his 1994 album, With Heart & Soul. Most of the material comes from Thomas’ debut, Why Can’t We Live Together, starting with “Rainbow Power,” one of the first singles he released to keep hold of the lightning from the hit - and you’ll notice similarities in tone, theme and music. In fact, the more you listen to that album, the more than “one-man band” thing comes through, whether on the slow-jam “The Coldest Day of My Life,” the snappier, strutting “Opportunity,” and the charmingly trippy, “In the Beginning.”
Thomas added some brighter tones and flourishes on his follow-up album, You’re the Song, but, quality and preference notwithstanding, you’re not hearing anything wildly new on either “Sweet Brown Sugar” (I think that one’s a charmer), but he beefed up either the production or instrumentation on “Deep in You” and “Ebony Affair” - or it just appears there’s a little more meat on those bones (and, hey, Betty Wright sings on the latter!). The last two songs come from 1977’s Touch to Touch - “Africano” and “Love for the People” - and I’m a fan of his choices on both, electro-funk (maybe?) on the former and straight-up disco on the latter.
There’s also something very indie about Timmy Thomas’ career. Despite playing in a different genre, he translated to the era I know surprisingly well. I had fun with this one. Liked the music, liked the subject, etc. It’s not the richest material in the world, but, if you like it…
Another chapter, another journey into the unknown; not even my oldies-radio-lovin’ wife had heard Timmy Thomas’ 1972 hit, “We Cant’ We Live Together.” That said, millions of young people have heard the tune without realizing it. (Quality foreshadowing…)
It opens with a percussive tapping. Pulses on an electric organ come in just over ten seconds in and proceeds to soar over it (or surf on it?) that sound. The longer the intro runs (it is not short), the more it feels thoughtful, even meditative, like an idea turning over in someone’s mind. The song continues - short, tense bursts from the electric organ here, some mellow grounding tones there - and then the vocals come in to pose the plaintive, troubled question: “Why Can’t We Live Together.” Call it a plea playing over a groove.
I’ll let Timmy Thomas tell the origin story. This comes from a 2015 interview with Spin Magazine on another big moment in his career:
“And then after that, put it on this little tape, and went to WEBF, which was a local radio station. And they played local artists then… they played it, and the phones lit up. They said ‘Man, who is that?’ And I did it as a one-man band! That was my foot playing bass, that was my left-hand playing guitar… Could never believe that as a one-man band, something like that would’ve been played that much. But I do believe that the world was ready to start changing a little bit. And that song made the change.”
One man alone in a room doing it all. Timmy Thomas was ahead of his time in a couple ways.
The Rest of the Story
Timothy E. Thomas came into this world in 1944, born in Indiana. He started in music with a band called Phillip & the Faithfuls, who released a string of singles in the mid-1960s (represented on the sampler by “Love Me” and “Rhythm Marie”) After that project dried up, he became a session musician in Memphis (and, from another source, a school administrator) while releasing more material on the side - e.g., “Have Some Boogaloo” and “It’s My Life” (snappy little cover) - on a local label called Goldwax Records. Thomas never stopped plugging away at his side gig; in fact, he went in even harder after another position in education moved him to Miami, Florida, opening a nightclub on the corner of 46th & Collins. Which is where things took off for him.
As he recalls on a 2016 episode of Nardwuar’s show, the inspiration for “Why Can’t We Live Together” hit Thomas one night as he watched Walter Kronkite talk about a day’s worth of casualties (his phrasing on that is impossible, but always consistent), and that one crystal-clear thought took shape in his mind. After turning his thought into a song, Thomas played it live at his nightclub and, as they say, the crowd went wild. With that reception at his back, Thomas recorded a demo of the song and passed it to a DJ at…WEDR(? who knows?) to get it on the air. The one thing everyone agrees on is that, immediately after it played, the phones lit up with people asking to know what it was and who sang it.
One person who heard it was Henry Stone, a distributor who ran a Florida outfit called TK Records. Based in Hialeah, FL, that label helped pioneer the disco sound with artists like the Hues Corporation’s (“Rock the Boat,” aka, my first disco memory) and most of what KC & the Sunshine Band put out into the world. Thomas heard potential in the song and, after toying with passing it off to Atlantic Records (“I was on a plane on my way up to New York to lease the single to them for national distribution when I said, ‘Fuck it. I can do this myself.'”; he didn’t think long), Stone signed Thomas to TK’s Glades imprint and made him (briefly) famous. It sold well, charted strong (#3 on the generic Billboard, #1 on the R&B), and it sent Thomas all over the world - and to one stop, in particular, that becomes relevant later on. When Thomas traveled to South Africa, he skipped past the infamous Sun City and became the first American artist to perform in Soweto (“Whether red, yellow, black, or white”). As he noted later with justifiable pride:
“Anywhere in the world that there was unrest, they called me in. I played the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa. I knew my music couldn’t change laws, but it could change hearts. And I never played a single segregated concert anywhere.”
As happened to every artist in this series, the spotlight turned away from Timmy Thomas. He continued releasing material through Glade - after 1972’s Why Can’t We Live Together came You’re the Song (I’ve Always Wanted to Sing) (1974), The Magician (1976), and Touch to Touch (1977) (plus a couple more later) - dropping a string of singles on both Glade and TK along with the way. He also produced for other artists on the Glade imprint and recorded with a few of them - e.g., a 1975 duet with Betty Wright on “It’s What They Can’t See” (could only find a different song; still, have a taste). An NPR piece recognized Thomas “a musical cornerstone of the local TK Records crowd, but a producer/songwriter for Betty Wright and Gwen McRae.” Thomas even returned to the (soul) charts in the mid-1980s with “Gotta Give a Little Love (Ten Years After),” but he remained a regional artist playing in a niche genre, not a man with a massive hit on the national charts…but his story had a couple twists left in it.
First, Drake sampled “Why Can’t We Live Together” for his 2015 hit, “Hotline Bling,” something I only mention because it gave Thomas a thrill (and gave him to a lift to release new material on Spotify); it had already inspired a handful of other artists to cover it - e.g., Sade, Steve Winwood, Santana, and Joan Osborne - and/or re-work it, e.g., MC Hammer. All that pales to invisibility next to the crowning moment of Timmy Thomas’ career, e.g., that one time when his hit enjoyed a star turn in South Africa’s first fair and open election:
“I was there for the voting in ‘93, ‘94, when Dr. Mandela [was elected president]. I played on the television, my song was the theme for the whole thing. I couldn’t believe it, man, that one song got me to go and play in 38 countries, all over the nation, all 50 states.”
It only took a little reading to make Timmy Thomas a very easy man to cheer for - and his comments on Drake and the changes he made to the tone and meaning of his song are just plain delightful. Unlike several artists in this series, he presents as more of a “normal” artist - i.e., someone who makes music that they like. He hopes people will respond to it, obviously, but this was a case of fame finding him while he was doing his own thing. Maybe that’s what made him a one-hit wonder, but Henry Stone once offered him a much better theory:
"Timmy, your major problem was what you said was so profound, that you could never back it up. Listen to what you said, you asked, ‘Why can’t we all in the world live together? No more wars, everybody wants peace, no matter what color, you’re still my brother.’ Now what are you gonna back that up with?”
Well…I mean, the South Africa thing was pretty cool…
About the Sampler
The hit made the sampler, of course, along with the two Phillip & the Faithful tracks noted above, but I pulled the rest from three of the albums Spotify made available - i.e., because it didn’t really turn my crank, I skipped his 1994 album, With Heart & Soul. Most of the material comes from Thomas’ debut, Why Can’t We Live Together, starting with “Rainbow Power,” one of the first singles he released to keep hold of the lightning from the hit - and you’ll notice similarities in tone, theme and music. In fact, the more you listen to that album, the more than “one-man band” thing comes through, whether on the slow-jam “The Coldest Day of My Life,” the snappier, strutting “Opportunity,” and the charmingly trippy, “In the Beginning.”
Thomas added some brighter tones and flourishes on his follow-up album, You’re the Song, but, quality and preference notwithstanding, you’re not hearing anything wildly new on either “Sweet Brown Sugar” (I think that one’s a charmer), but he beefed up either the production or instrumentation on “Deep in You” and “Ebony Affair” - or it just appears there’s a little more meat on those bones (and, hey, Betty Wright sings on the latter!). The last two songs come from 1977’s Touch to Touch - “Africano” and “Love for the People” - and I’m a fan of his choices on both, electro-funk (maybe?) on the former and straight-up disco on the latter.
There’s also something very indie about Timmy Thomas’ career. Despite playing in a different genre, he translated to the era I know surprisingly well. I had fun with this one. Liked the music, liked the subject, etc. It’s not the richest material in the world, but, if you like it…
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