Kid Thomas, 91; Trumpeter Led Preservation Hall Band

Kid Thomas, the long-time leader of the Preservation Hall band and one of the few trumpet players who played traditional jazz uninfluenced by Louis Armstrong, is dead at age 91.

He died Tuesday in New Orleans. His last performance was at Preservation Hall in September, when, too frail to perform a full set, he played second trumpet.

Musicians described his music as “rough house”--loud, exuberant jazz that was fashioned in the dance halls on the Mississippi River banks across from New Orleans.

There was dispute about his age; even his father said he didn’t know when he was born. Preservation Hall literature put his birth date at Feb. 2, 1896, which made him older than Armstrong, and Kid Thomas played like trumpeters did before Armstrong changed it all. He said Armstrong was his idol, but he never copied his style.

In his “The Encyclopedia of Jazz,” Leonard Feather, The Times jazz critic, quotes one critic as saying that Thomas “is the closest we can hope to get to Freddie Keppard and the other pre-Louis players.”

Instead of Armstrong’s melodious tones, Thomas chopped out rough, clipped notes, loud and economical, in a style that was simple and rhythmic, focused on force rather than melody.

“You won’t ever hear me bragging about my playing,” Thomas said in a 1977 interview. “People come and tell you how good you is. I don’t get excited. What’s the use?

“I can do something, and I know I’m doing it pretty good. I can thank God. If you get excited, you know what’s going to happen? I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen. Your head’s going to get that big, and all your friends, they don’t want to speak to you.”

Kid Thomas was born as Thomas Valentine in Reserve, La., a few miles west of New Orleans, son of a trumpet player and instrument custodian for the Picquit Brass Band. He taught himself valve trombone by sneaking into the band room before his father bought him his first trumpet. He began playing professionally in his teens.

He moved to New Orleans after World War I, and in the 1940s and ‘50s his band was a fixture at places like the Moulin Rouge dance hall on New Orleans’ west bank. He also has been heard in Fireman’s Hall, the Tip Top, in concert at Tulane University and at openings of local softball games.

When New Orleans jazz was in decline in America in the early 1960s, he recorded in England. He was a member of the George Lewis band that made music history when it went to Japan in 1965.

It was Kid Thomas’ Algiers Stompers that used an old French Quarter art gallery for night rehearsals, began drawing crowds and, in effect, made Preservation Hall happen.

Flyers written in the early years of Preservation Hall said it is almost certain that the hall would not have evolved as it did had it not been for Kid Thomas.