Thompson, Tommy, 1937-2003

Tommy Thompson (1937-2003) was a founding member of both the Hollow Rock String Band and the Red Clay Ramblers, as well as a playwright, composer, and actor.

Tommy Thompson (1937-2003) was a founding member of both the Hollow Rock String Band and the Red Clay Ramblers, as well as a playwright, composer, and actor. In the mid-1960s, Thompson was a regular attendee at the Friday picking sessions at the Hollow Rock Grocery in the Hollow Rock Community outside of Durham, N.C. As these gatherings outgrew the grocery store, the weekly sessions moved to the home of Tommy and his wife Bobbie, and quickly became the social hub of Chapel Hill and Durham's string-band revivalist scene. The short-lived but widely celebrated Hollow Rock String Band developed out of this musical community and featured Tommy Thompson on banjo, Bobbie Thompson on guitar, Bertram Levy on mandolin, and Alan Jabbour on fiddle. The group recorded its only album in 1968.

Thompson formed his second band, the Red Clay Ramblers, in 1972 as a trio with Jim Watson and Bill Hicks; Mike Craver joined the group in 1973 and Jack Herrick joined in 1975. Subsequent incarnations of the band also included Bland Simpson, Clay Buckner, and Chris Frank. Thompson performed with the group for the last time in 1994.

Throughout the 1980s Thompson scripted, scored, and performed in--often in collaboration with other members of the Ramblers--a number of stage plays, including his own one-man-show, The Last Song of John Proffitt, a play exploring the historical figures Dan Emmett and the Snowden family, the development of the banjo, blackface minstrelsey, and the 19th-century interactions of black and white musical traditions.

Thompson died on 24 January 2003, after a long struggle with an Alzheimer's-like illness.