Houston jazz legend Bubbha Thomas Photo: courtesy photo

Houston’s reputation for developing first-class jazz drummers is well-established as a stream of young players has distinguished itself for decades, from Sebastian Whittaker to Eric Harland to Jeremy Dutton. Bubbha Thomas was a key player in that tradition, among the musicians and mentors who stood tallest, despite sitting behind a drum kit.

Thomas died of heart failure Saturday in Houston, according to his son. He was 82.

His career included time playing on storied Duke-Peacock recordings in the 1960s, and he led an incredible spiritual jazz ensemble, the Lightmen, in the 1970s. In his career he earned five Grammy nominations, and authored a pair of books.

Thomas had a storied career as a drummer and bandleader, but perhaps his most enduring work is that as founder of Houston’s Summer Jazz Workshop, a remarkable program that nurtured young talent for generations.

“The older I get the more I realize how fortunate I was to be a part of the Summer Jazz Workshop,” jazz drummer Reggie Quinerly said Saturday. “When you get older, you realize the importance of time. And to share something like that with young people, it’s priceless. I can’t begin to count the number of young people who benefitted from the exposure to music and the arts because of Bubbha Thomas.”

Added drummer Jeremy Dutton, who last month appeared in Houston with Vijay Iyer, “You really can’t overstate what he meant to the Houston music community.”

Son William Thomas posted on social media: “Rest in music, my hero, my father, the greatest man I have ever known.”

FROM SOUL TO "SPIRITUAL JAZZ"

Before becoming an artist and educator, Thomas was a Fourth Ward kid who grew up in a music-filled household. He attended Booker T. Washington High School, dividing his time between music and basketball. He excelled at both, earning all-state honors in basketball. Music found Thomas studying with Houston jazz legend Conrad “Prof” Johnson.

Thomas continued his study at Wiley College, and was a Korean War veteran before he returned to Houston in the 1960s, where he found work drumming on sessions for Don Robey’s Duke and Peacock labels starting in 1963. Thomas drummed on recordings by O.V. Wright, Buddy Ace and the Mighty Clouds of Joy.

In 1970, Thomas released “Free as You Wanna Be,” with his band, the Lightmen. A half century later, the record still bristles with ageless energy as Thomas and his collaborators — including the great Ronnie Laws on saxophone and blues guitarist Kinny Abair on guitar — cut a new path through jazz that had a progressive sound and an international bent that felt earthier than the jazz fusion that was in vogue during that time.

His was a soulful sort of jazz with a socially inclusive bent. With no real peer, it was dubbed “spiritual jazz.”

The Lightmen albums eventually fell out of print until 2019 when the Now-Again record label brought “Free as You Wanna Be,” “Energy Control Center,” “Fancy Pants” and “Country Fried Chicken” back into circulation and generated new interest in Thomas’ work as a composer, band-leader and drummer.

NEW LIFE AS AN EDUCATOR

Because the Lightmen albums became rarities, more people in Houston knew Thomas for his other job, founding and operating the Summer Jazz Workshop, which he launched in the early 1970s in collaboration with Johnson, a premier jazz player who worked as the instructor, organizer and orchestrator of Houston’s storied Kashmere Stage Band.

“At Whiley he was in band one day, and the director asked him something about notes or harmonics or something like that,” son William Thomas, a three-time Grammy nominee and founder of the Bayou City Brass Band, says. “My dad told him, ‘I’m a drummer, I don’t have to learn that.’ The band director told him, ‘If you want a degree, these notes are going to move in all kinds of ways. And you have to learn all of it.’”

When Thomas returned to Houston he asked Johnson, his mentor why their study hadn’t been deeper. Johnson told him there were sporting events, seasonal programs and other performances for which to prepare.

“Dad decided he needed to change that,” William Thomas says. “He decided to start a summer program that had classes like theory, music history, music business.”

Being so young, Thomas asked Johnson to join his staff to lend the Summer Jazz Workshop some weight.

The program grew and sent musicians of all sorts into the world.

Mark Speer of the band Khruangbin recalls being in Austin a few years ago with the head of Now-Again, who was carrying a record by Johnson.

“I was talking to him about Prof and the Summer Jazz Workshop, and I had no idea (record) diggers were into that stuff. It was like waking up one morning and finding out your high school teacher is a legend.”

The Summer Jazz Workshop turns 48 this year. Thomas and a remarkable team of instructors — including another drummer, Craig Green — ran a program that had an inestimable positive effect on the city and its aspiring musicians.

“It wasn’t like, ‘Here’s today’s bass lesson,’” says Speer. “There was no bass lesson. It’s here’s how you play music. That program really taught me to play in an ensemble.”

Another student was drummer and bandleader Chris Dave — whose career includes his own band, the Drumhedz, as well as a long resume including credits with Adele, Ed Sheeran and several jazz and hip-hop players. “It was nothing like summer school,” he said. “It was a school where everybody was mad when it was over.”

Dave also describes a program that threw its gates open to all players who showed promise.

“They’d work things out for anybody,” he said. “I’d seen them let in students for free because a kid was too talented on whatever, guitar, marimba, to miss out. Bubbha always wanted to have those kids.”

Jason Moran — like Quinerly, Dave and Dutton, an alumnus of the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts — remembers Thomas as an educator even before the Summer Jazz Workshop. He recalls Thomas doing a jazz and poetry project at his elementary school.

“I remember joining Summer Jazz Workshop and realizing that it was intergenerational…(Bubbha Thomas) and Conrad Johnson were the ultra cool,” he said.

In high school, Moran discovered Thomas’ recordings “with the great drum breaks … what my friends and I would look for to sample.

“Bubbha possessed the funk and soul of jazz and knew how to share it with everyone,” Moran said. “And that everyone was the city of Houston.”

Thomas is survived by his son William and two grandchildren.

andrew.dansby@chron.com