He crossed paths with James Brown and Quincy Jones but hated playing fame’s game, and shrank into obscurity. Now 82, the Portland singer is thriving once more
As Ural Thomas freely admits, he is not a man overburdened with ambition. “I’m not trying to compete with anyone, or trying to be better,” he shrugs, on a video call from his home town of Portland, Oregon. “If I found someone that wanted to play music with me, that was my purpose – I wanted to play with him, not compete with the guy. I don’t want that competing. That’s not music to me no more, I’m doing something that’s not pleasing to my soul.”
Perhaps, he concedes, that’s why he never really made it as a singer in the 1960s, despite an extraordinary career that took in encounters with everyone from celebrated garage band the Kingsmen – of Louie Louie fame – to Otis Redding, Quincy Jones and James Brown. “I met a lot of people who showed me the business side of it, and what you had to be and what you really had to have to get to the top. I said, well, I don’t really want to fight with nobody. My best shot is to just live and be what I am, and people can make their own judgments.”
