As I write these words, Tommy Thompson, banjoist,
songwriter, actor, playwright, bon vivant, old-time
revivalist and “whatzit” innovator, has been
gone for about a week—and for over a decade. In
1994, while working on the show “Fool Moon” in
New York City, he became aware of his growing mental
confusion and left the stage and the Red Clay Ramblers,
the band he’d cofounded with Jim Watson and myself
in 1972, for Chapel Hill and a battery of diagnostic
tests. He soon learned he was afflicted with an “Alzheimer’s-like” illness.
I hadn’t seen Tommy for a number of years at that
point in his life, and I ran into his former wife,
folklorist Cece Conway, at a health food store in Chapel
Hill and heard this news from her. There were many
concerns—like most traveling musicians, Tommy
had been little prepared for medical disaster, his
family scattered to the winds.
(To read Bill Hicks’ full obituary for Tommy
Thompson, see OTH vol. 8, no. 8, Spring 2003.)
