Black and Blues

In the royal court of the blues there has never been a shortage of guitar-wielding pretenders to the throne. At the relatively tender age of twenty-seven, singer/guitarist Chris Thomas is proving that he's got what it takes to be the nineties' first heir apparent.

Bayou-bred and now living in Austin, Texas, Thomas has been working the notoriously competitive blues circuit since he was old enough to slip a quarter into the jukebox at Tabby's Blues Box, his dad's Baton Rouge nightclub. Thomas's new album, Cry

of the Prophets (Sire/HighTone/Reprise), is a modem reworking of the tried-and-true, down-and-dirty idioms he inhaled both on the road and at home. He juggles Hendrixian guitar wizardry, R&B showmanship, heavy-metal bravado, and flowerchild good vibes, and the result is a new take on a classic American art form. Most of all, he talks it like he walks and lives it, with the quiet, knowing ways of someone who has seen more than his reserved, measured drawl would lead you to believe.4 'I'm more blues than a lot of people who are out there doing it," he says, "because I'm not from Seattle or someplace, I'm from Baton Rouge."

AMY LINDEN