Baytop will pay tribute to bluesman ‘Mr. Bones’

Thomas was famous for Piedmont music style

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

In addition to the music, barbecue will be available from Dale’s Smokehouse.

Reservations are being taken through today with the two-hour event starting at 7 p.m.

Baytop, who was introduced to the Indian Head theater while performing in its production of ‘‘The Katrina Diaries: Breaching the Levees of Faith,” heads the Archie Edwards Blues Heritage Foundation and is dedicated to teaching Piedmont or East Coast Blues person-to-person in an effort to preserve the style’s legacy, said Peggy Palmer, executive director of the Black Box.

Baytop, a noted performer who will also be hosting jam sessions at the Black Box next month and will perform at the Blues Festival on the Indian Head Village Green in September, learned to play the bones – a basic rhythm instrument – from Thomas.

Thomas, who was born in Southern Maryland, living in the area until a move at the age of 6 took him to Washington, D.C., was a fixture on the blues scene for seven decades. He died in 2002, but not before passing on his musical know-how to a new generation of musicians.

Thomas, a World War II veteran and a member of the Red Ball Express, one of the war’s largest operations that involved a fleet of more than 6,000 trucks and trailers that delivered over 412,000 tons of ammunition, food and fuel to the Allied armies between Aug. 25 and Nov. 16, 1944, developed an interest in playing the bones after seeing Sammy Davis Jr. playing them in a vaudeville act.

Thomas’ first set of bones was constructed from a cigar box; he soon moved on to carving them from wood before settling on using six- to seven-inch beef rib bones as instruments. The process of preparing the rib bones takes about nine months, according to Palmer.

Tonight’s event will also serve as a survey of sorts.

‘‘We’re very interested to see if there are any blues musicians or if Southern Maryland has a heritage of blues,” Palmer said. ‘‘We want to pull [local] blues musicians out of the woodwork.”

Thomas’ niece will attend; bringing some of Thomas’ belongings to show, and Palmer is hoping to get more information on the bluesman from his family.

‘‘There is a Southern Maryland heritage link,” Palmer said. ‘‘This man didn’t get a lot of notoriety in Southern Maryland even though he was born here.”