Catching up with Tyrone Thomas

Some musicians get paid, others get recognition. Tyrone Thomas, drummer, singer and founder of the funk group The Whole Darn Family, has experienced just touches of both.

If you don’t recognize The Whole Darn family’s name, you might recognize the bass line from their 1976 hit, “7 Minutes of Funk” —which has been sampled by hip hop artists Jay Z & Foxy Brown, Q-Tip, Faith Evans, EPMD and many more. Though Thomas wrote and arranged the now classic breakbeat, he lost the rights to most of the royalties. “I had 100 percent of the publishing taken away from me, and I had 50 percent of the writer’s taken away from me by a manager I trusted to handle the paperwork.” said Thomas.

But Thomas isn’t bitter. He said he’s honored that his song has become one of the most sampled in hip hop history. “I’m thrilled, I’m happy, I’m elated,” he said. “I wanted to reach out to Jay Z to see if maybe he wanted to hear some of my other stuff, you know,” said Thomas. “It never happened, but hey, I’m still living, Jay Z is still living, we might still get together.”

Thomas hails from Richmond, VA, where he started singing in his first group at the age of 10, opening shows for most of the big soul acts of the ’60s. He taught himself to play the drums, and performed with various artists including Patti Labelle, before founding his own band.

We caught up with him for an interview at his apartment in the Bronx in early December, and then met him at the 77th street subway station where he sang old soul classics for straphangers.

Tina Thomas, 25, from Illinois is a younger fan of The Whole Darn Family. She discovered them while sifting through her Dad’s soul collection. “I used to sneak and listen to his records,” said Thomas (who is not related to Tyrone) “During one of my ’sneak attacks,’ I came across the Whole Darn Family and. it just got in my soul! It was so infectious,” she said.

Nowadays Thomas runs his own label Butah Beat records, so he can control the profit he makes– following the trend of many artists to go independent with their music production. But Thomas said that’s not the only reason he ventured out on his own. “When you get older, record labels don’t like to touch you,” he said, “…so I said, let me get my own label, build my own studio, and I did.”

- Allison Veronica Esposito & Mathew R. Warren