Rufus Thomas, the 81year-old Father of Funk, still wishes to be known as either "The Dog" or "The Funky Chicken" - and preferably both. Having just completed a series of gigs in Europe, he is now happily back in Memphis relentlessy entertaining whoever his audience might be, and thinking only of his next appearance. For this remarkable soul survivor, a song and dance man of the very old school, the performance is all. As one of the most influential performers on the soulful side of popular music, Rufus Thomas not only came up with Sun Records' first hit but also the first success for another fledgeling Memphis label called Satellite (later to become Stax). In the self-penned sleevenotes to Do The Funky Chicken, Rufus Thomas announces that he is "the most beautiful performer you'll ever see in your life". And he means it. "I come from Beale Street in Memphis," he says. "Set out to be a top-notch entertainer. I ain't lying - that's what I am." And although he denies it now, he further claims that he became a star at 14. "I never said I was a star at 14! If I was a star it was hidden. It was one of those stars that had a cloud over it - a drifting-type cloud. But eventually, as we would say, after a while, the cloud passed over the star and then the star came out - if you want to put it like that. But let me tell you something about stars and the word `star'. I don't know where it came from and as far as I'm concerned I don't use it. I don't like the word `star' in the profession because stars fall. But I'm not going to fall and so you can call me the moon. I'm going to be here from now on. So please - not a star - a moon! And I'm serious about that. Very serious about that. I consider myself a good artist and I believe to myself that I am a good artist but I am not superior to anyone."
Thomas began his long musical career with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels - a travelling vaudeville show where he perfected his skills as a dancer and a comic. And it is precisely this background that made him such a unique figure in soul music. His was an approach which brought something new to the music and which took it beyond being merely a secular version of gospel. No audience could ever resist Rufus the comic, the MC, the dancer, the singer of daft songs and the purveyor of the hard-thumping Memphis soul that is his trademark - all of it entirely informed by the imperative to be entertaining, something deeply ingrained since those early days in the tent shows.
"But I didn't put up no tent. They had people that put the tent up. What would happen is that we'd go to a little country town and every town had - and still has - a square. And we used to have a parade every day around the square to let the people know that we were in town. That night, man, it looked like they'd come out of the bo weevils in the cotton! "Vaudeville consisted of chorus girls, a singer, a dancer, a comic and then back to the chorus girls, the singer, the dancer, the comic and back to the chorus girls and so on. And we had some great shows.
"Las Vegas is supposed to be the city of the beautiful chorus girls and the glamorous costumes and everything - but we had everything beautiful too. I was a tap dancer first and eventually I became the comedian on the show when the comedian got sick. And that's what I wanted to do anyway. When I was 14 my teacher used to put on plays at Booker T. Washington High School and I did a little comedy then. I thought I was funny!" Thomas worked the Vaudeville circuit all through the 1930s. These were hard times for any performer but particularly so for a black artist in the south. His recollection of those days is clouded by images of segregation and discrimination - something which he says only began to change many years later when people finally decided that they would no longer ride in the back of the bus. In fact, they would no longer ride in the bus at all. `WHEN they put up the tent they had an aisle right down the centre - black on one side and white on the other. We did the show and when it was over we'd go to the segregated part of town because there were no hotels for blacks at that time. We had to live in people's homes for 50 cents a night and, if it was a real nice home, it was 75 cents a night. But that was the way it was and you act according to when, where and what time it is. I had to go in the back door here and I couldn't eat at a lunch counter there and I couldn't fraternise and people couldn't be people. But even during those horrible days of segregation, the showbusiness was good to me. If they had left it only to musicians and the people in showbusiness there never would have been any trouble. Because we were the kind of people that didn't give a damn. We learned from each other and the white musician always wanted to be with the black musician. They knew why it was and they wanted to learn from it. It happened back there then, and it has happened through to this very day."
In 1953 Thomas recorded Bearcat at Sam Phillips's Sun Studios. It was an answer-record to Big Mama Thornton's Hound Dog and became Phillips's first hit record at Sun. But when a truck driver called Elvis Presley turned up wanting to cut a record for his mother, everything changed - and not just in Memphis. Thomas nevertheless remained at the heart of the music, continuing to work as a DJ at WDIA (known as The Mother Station Of The Negroes) and as an MC at the Handy and Palace theatres, where he brought people such as BB King, Bobby Bland and Johnny Ace to the public's attention for the first time. Even so, an apparently new phenomenon called rock 'n' roll had definitely arrived and black music performed by black people might have seemed, for the time being, a lost cause.
"Nobody can do my stuff better than me. And there are so many good songs that have been done so well by so many black artists and then somebody comes along who's not half as good but he's white. For instance - and I can always say this - Pat Boone trying to copy Little Richard: isn't that the worst thing that you ever heard of in your life? Can you imagine Pat Boone making a hit record off a Little Richard song? The only reason he could do it is because he was white. It's not morally right and it's not right any way you look at it. Same thing with the blues. Blues is the only authentic American music and it was the beginning and the foundation of it all. That's the way it is. But where do the white people put the blues here in America? On the bottom of the totem pole! But then they get music from Paderewski and Tchaikovsky and all of those people and they put it on top! At home! But the blues? They don't look at! And yet today there are more white bands playing the blues than ever before in history and Walking The Dog is part of that."
In the early 1960s Rufus scored several hits with his Dog songs - the most popular being Walking The Dog, recorded for another successful Memphis record label known as Stax - home of, among others, Otis Redding, Booker T and The MGs, Sam and Dave and Eddie Floyd. And once again, Rufus Thomas can claim a certain amount of the credit for the label's success. Already in his mid-40s and also working as a boilerman at a textile bleaching plant, he suggested to Satellite (as Stax was then known) that he should record a song called Cause I Love You as a duet with his daughter Carla. It was a hit and not only launched Carla and the company, but relaunched Rufus himself. His radio connections helped considerably in promoting the label and soon they had a major hit on their hands with Carla's teenage love song Gee Whiz (Look At His Eyes).
Stax grew and flourished as a racially mixed venture and produced most of the classic soul of the period. The success of the label proved a point to Thomas, inevitably disillusioned over his experiences at Sun.
"I saw him (Sam Phillips) yesterday in the drugstore and I said a few words to him. When Elvis came along Sam Phillips let all the black people go - he let every black person go including me. All of Sam's stable after us was white - Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and all of them along that line - everybody white. But Sam was not right. And it was in the stars that it was never to happen again. Stax Records proved that blacks and whites could work together. As long as you had talent we didn't care."
Further dancefloor variations on the theme of The Dog saw Rufus into the 1970s, when he launched into the funkiest music ever released on Stax. At the age of 53 he had a hit with the spectacular Funky Chicken and more was to follow including, inevitably, The Funky Penguin - the old vaudevillian more than happy to wear a zip-up penguin suit on stage. On other occasions he tended to wear pink hot pants and a cape. He really was The World's Oldest Teenager - all singing, all dancing and enjoying the most successful period of his life.
"They call me the Father of Funk. I'm talking about the Funky Penguin and The Funky Chicken - it's soul funk, man! It had that big, fat, gutbucket backbeat and that bass that went with it. If you want to talk about funk you have to talk about Stax and Memphis and I was the innovator of the funk. I'm just glad I was there.
"Today, at 81, I have acquired some things that you only get when you die. I have a street in Memphis named after me and I have a monument thats erected to me - a 10-foot monument! I guess it's about five feet wide!"