In May, members of our Classics subscription will receive Energy Control Center, the third album from Bubbha Thomas and his Lightmen. Working out of Houston, Texas, in the early ‘70s, the Lightmen released four albums of freak out spiritual-jazz, and their albums got a small, but discerning and rabid audience. These albums prove that there was amazing, boundary-pushing jazz that existed outside of the New York-L.A. nexus of ‘70s jazz. This new edition of the album, released in partnership with our pals at Now Again, is remastered from the original tapes, and features a Listening Notes booklet—with a new interview with Bubbha himself—by Lance Scott Walker.

Houston, Texas, is not particularly well known for either jazz music or Civil Rights, but both had a vibrant presence in the Bayou City of the late 1960s. Bubbha Thomas was proof of that. He grew up in Fourth Ward playing basketball and drums, went away to college, then off to war in Korea—where he maneuvered himself into the band to get out of kitchen patrol duty—and then returned to Houston to start his career as Bubbha Thomas.

Bubbha had always played music, but by the early ’70s he was also writing and working as an editor, first for Houston Informer and then Voice of HOPE, weekly papers from Houston’s black community that offered him a platform as an activist. Civil Rights figures like Eldrewey Stearns, Quentin Mease, and the Rev. Bill Lawson had forged progress in a city that was stunned by the 1970 police killing of Black Panther Carl Hampton, and Bubbha wanted to give voice to the city’s heated political landscape through his music.

In the early ’70s, there was a bottleneck of intellectual and musical talent coming out of Texas Southern University, a historically black college in Third Ward that was pivotal in Houston’s Civil Rights Movement. Players like Barrie Hall, Ronnie Laws, Kirk Whalum, and members of the Jazz Crusaders would all come out of the scene where Bubbha found his bandmates.

Houston was rife with blues, R&B, and zydeco clubs, but not jazz. Nevertheless, The Lightmen found an audience for their unique hybrid of spiritual jazz and deep funk, appearing at TSU’s Sawyer Auditorium, The Continental Showcase, and Ray Barnett’s Cinder Club. Harris said, “Man, we did TV shows, we did parks, we did a little bit of everything to put it mildly. There was one location in town where the real jazz lovers were, and it was a place in Fifth Ward called Pecko’s. They would have jam sessions there on Tuesday night, and those were the true fans. I’ve heard a lot of these young guys who came out of Houston, Jason Moran and Robert Glasper and those guys, they don’t even know about Pecko’s. It was just a diehard place, man.”

Bubbha remembers a Sunday afternoon club date when a guy in the audience tried to make a request: “‘Hey man—y’all know ‘Listen Here?’ ‘Listen Here’ by Eddie Harris was real popular. And Marsha stood up and said, ‘Hell no! If you wanna hear ‘Listen Here,’ you better take your ass home.’ And I was so embarrassed. I was like, ‘Damn, girl! You can’t say that to these people!’ But that was our attitude!”