Chris Thomas King

Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana — Son of bluesman Tabby Thomas — Based in New Orleans

Chris Thomas King is a New Orleans-based blues guitarist, singer, actor, and author — the son of Baton Rouge bluesman Tabby Thomas. Raised around his father’s club, Tabby’s Blues Box, he fused blues with hip-hop decades before it was fashionable, played Tommy Johnson in the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and performed on its Grammy-winning Album of the Year soundtrack.

Never heard Chris Thomas King before?

🎵 Signature Song

"Hard Time Killing Floor Blues"

🎬 Film Role

Tommy Johnson, O Brother

📖 Author Of

The Blues: The Authentic Narrative

King is a true innovator — his music is authentic blues; it is contemporary blues.

— All About Jazz

Why We Love Chris Thomas King

Chris Thomas King refuses to let the blues sit in a museum. The son of Baton Rouge juke-joint icon Tabby Thomas, he grew up inside the music — then spent his career dragging it into the present, fusing it with hip-hop on 21st Century Blues… From Da Hood when purists clutched their pearls, and writing a book that argues the blues was born not in the Delta but in Creole New Orleans. He’s a Grammy and CMA Album of the Year winner, a film actor, a Stratocaster master, and one of the sharpest thinkers the blues has — Louisiana through and through, and utterly his own man.

Biography

Blues for the 21st Century

Born Chris Thomas in Baton Rouge, the son of respected Louisiana bluesman and club owner Tabby Thomas, he was surrounded by music from childhood — taking up trumpet in sixth grade, then guitar, and soaking up everything he could hanging out at his father’s club, Tabby’s Blues Box. Young Thomas was shaped as much by Jimi Hendrix, soul, and early rap as by the blues; he didn’t settle on the blues until his late teens, when he toured Europe with his father and found audiences far larger and more enthusiastic than any back home. A demo tape landed him a deal with Arhoolie Records, and on his 1986 debut The Beginning he played every instrument himself.

After relocating to Austin and broadening his sound, he wrote and produced 21st Century Blues… From Da Hood (1994), a pioneering fusion of traditional blues and hip-hop — and only then added “King” to the name he’d recorded under as Chris Thomas. He kept exploring the seams between blues tradition and the present on Red Mud (1998), The Legend of Tommy Johnson, Act 1: Genesis 1900’s–1990’s (2001), and Rise (2006), written after Hurricane Katrina destroyed his home and recording studio; the Tommy Johnson and Rise albums both reached the Top 20 of Billboard’s blues chart.

"King is a true innovator — his music is authentic blues; it is contemporary blues."

— All About Jazz

His breakthrough to a mass audience came with the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), in which he played Delta blues legend Tommy Johnson and performed Skip James’s “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” on a soundtrack that won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year as well as the Country Music Association’s Album of the Year — part of more than 10 million records he has sold in the United States. He went on to play Blind Willie Johnson in Wim Wenders’ The Soul of a Man (2003) and Lowell Fulson in Ray (2004).

In June 2021, Chicago Review Press published his book The Blues: The Authentic Narrative of My Music and Culture, which argues that the blues derives from the urban Creole culture of New Orleans rather than the Mississippi Delta. In March 2023 he founded the nonprofit Blues Origin Institute in Prairieville, Louisiana, to preserve blues history and mentor young players. His most recent album, Big Grey Sky (2023), appeared on his own 21st Century Blues Records.