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.”
