APPRECIATION | OBITUARY - Tommy Tate: Musician 1944-2017

The Clarion-Ledger

Tommy Tate

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I had never heard of Tommy Tate until a text informed me he had died Jan. 20 in a Jackson nursing home at the age of 72.

“You should write something about him. He deserves it,” my friend suggested in a follow-up text.

So I began making a few calls, and I’m thankful I did. One local musician after another told me the same thing: “We always called Tommy ‘the best singer folks never heard of.’ ”

These were talented, accomplished people saying this. They had played or recorded with some of the greatest musicians and singers in the world. But each of them ranked Tommy Tate either at or near the top when it came to singing a song. Any song, from soul to R&B to country.

This from local bass player extraordinaire Raphael Semmes: “His voice had a combination of every attribute that singers wish they had. It was raspy but smooth, and it went from a baritone to a tenor. You would think he couldn’t sing any lower, but then he would. You’d think, ‘He can’t reach that high note coming up.’ But he always did. In other words, his voice was whatever it needed to be. The line of people who can do that is very short.”

I told Semmes, whom I’ve known for years, “I’ve never heard you talk like this about anyone.”

He laughed. “Man, Tommy Tate wasn’t like anyone I’ve ever known This cat was tuned into that great radio station in the cosmos," Semmes said. “Malcolm White, who owned George Street Grocery (now Ole Tavern on George Street), arranged for me to play with Tommy. So I walked over to him and said, ‘Man, it’s great to meet you. I’m a huge fan.’ And Tommy says real cool like, ‘Yeah, man, nice to meet you, too. Uh ... Virgo.’

“I jumped back. Two seconds after he shook my hand, the man was telling me my zodiac sign. And I’ve been there when he’s done the same thing with at least a dozen others. Now if he could feel that standing next to someone he had just met, what was he able to feel and convey to people through singing and playing the piano and drums?”

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Jerry Puckett, who lives in the Jackson area and has played guitar on albums in Nashville with such stars as Willie Nelson and Paul Simon, worked with Tate.

“Excellent pitch,” Puckett said. “That’s what I think of when somebody mentions Tommy Tate to me.”

Wolf Stephenson, vice president and chief engineer at historic Malaco Records in Jackson, met Tate in the late 1960s. Tate, a black man, was fronting the all-white Tim Whitsett & the Imperial Show Band.

“Integrated bands were unheard of back in that day,” Stephenson said. “But people didn’t care. Once they heard that band and heard Tommy Tate sing, the music is all they cared about. They wound up touring all over the country. They were big.”

Tate eventually began doing some work for Malaco.

“First time I heard Tommy sing, I couldn’t believe it,” Stephenson said. “He had so much tone … and power. You just don’t hear power come out of a person’s mouth like that. And he never missed a note. Never.

“The crazy part of this whole thing is that Tommy had a speech impediment. He stuttered really bad, and when he got excited he stuttered even worse. But like ol’ Mel Tillis, once the music started, the stuttering went away.

“And Tommy was a great songwriter, too. He co-wrote (with Cookie Palmer) the title track off Bobby Bland’s ‘Midnight Run’ album. That album stayed on the charts for nearly two years.”

Stephenson began taking Tate with him to Muscle Shoals for recording sessions.

“We would be laying down tracks for people like Johnnie Taylor and Bobby Bland and Little Milton,” he recalled. “If the singer couldn’t be at the session, we always wanted to put down a vocal because it just seemed to make the whole thing work better. The vocals sort of lit a fire under the musicians.

“We called them ‘scratch’ vocals, meaning we would scratch that vocal when the artist came in to sing it. Doing ‘scratch’ vocals is really, really hard, and I’ve never seen anyone better at it than Tommy Tate.

“He might do one for Johnnie, and Johnnie had a high voice. Then Tommy would do one for Bobby, and Bobby had a low voice. Tommy would sing the songs in the key that Johnnie and Bobby needed them in. He would sing them in the same style that he knew they would sing them in, right down to the unique inflections of their voices. Then when their schedules allowed, Johnnie and Bobby would come in, listen to the song with the ‘scratch’ vocal laid over it. That’s how they learned the song.”

Stephenson laughed. “I’ve seen it completely intimidate them, listening to Tommy’s vocals and knowing they had to at least equal that. And we’re talking about some great singers now. Johnnie and Bobby could do it. But to do it as well as Tommy, they had to bring their lunch and stay a while.”

'One of the biggest stars'

One burning question kept coming up: How could someone with a voice like Tate never make it commercially? His closest brush with fame occurred in 1972 when his song "School of Life" reached the Top 30 on the R&B charts.

“I’ve asked myself that question for 40-plus years,” Stephenson said. “He signed with Stax Records up in Memphis in 1970. That was his real big chance. But not long after he got there, Stax began cratering … they just fell apart (financially). And Tommy got caught up in all of that.

“I wonder sometimes if he became disillusioned with the music business. He came back to Jackson and played clubs around here. But you know what? I never once heard him complain about what happened. He never seemed down. Never felt sorry for himself. He always made you feel better by being around him.”

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“A lot of factors go into so-called ‘making it,’ ” Semmes said. “If it's being a commercial artist with a ton of hits, I guess you could say he never made it. But I do know this: He is one of the biggest stars to ever play around here and in Mississippi. He was a legend. If you ever heard him sing, you never forgot it.

“I’ve got friends today who are white (and) talk about going out to the black clubs off Northside Drive back in the ’60s and sitting on the hoods of their cars, just to listen to Tommy Tate.

“I think he’s a lot like folklore or great paintings that have been handed down through the years. Tommy Tate’s legend has been handed down through the years. You know how I know? We’re sitting here talking about him, and I would say it was very rare that he sang a note after 1990 or so.”

'Friend of mine'

Tate, who was born in Homestead, Florida, and moved to Jackson at age 6, had polio as a child and always walked with a slight limp. Friends said he suffered a series of strokes beginning in the 1980s.

“He would still come by the studio five, 10 years ago,” Stephenson said. “He couldn’t drive anymore, but his buddy Cookie Palmer would bring him and we’d talk all afternoon. But the last two or three years … not so much.”

Jerry Puckett went to see Tate a couple of years ago at the nursing home. He had heard Tate’s health had severely declined. So Puckett decided to greet him with the line of a song they had written together.

Music, after all, is often the last thing that escapes our recollection.

Puckett walked into Tate’s room singing, “Oh, friend of mine, good buddy...”

Tate’s expression never changed.

“He didn’t know the song, and he didn’t know me,” Puckett said.

Contact Billy Watkins at 601-961-7282 or bwatkins@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @BillyWatkins11 on Twitter.

Tommy Tate funeral arrangements

Visitation: 12-6 p.m. Friday, People's Funeral Home, 886 N. Farish St., Jackson

Funeral: 11 a.m. Saturday, Greater Antioch MB Church, 175 Richardson Drive, Jackson

Interment: Autumn Woods Memorial Gardens, 4000 W. Northside Drive, Jackson

SOURCE - The Clarion-Ledger