Sunday Night Jazz
with Larry Thomas
Larry Reni Thomas is a 30-year veteran writer/radio announcer
based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who has worked at seven
radio stations and whose journalistic work has appeared in
downbeat and The New York Times Magazine.
Thomas was born in 1950 and reared in Wilmington, North
Carolina. He began his professional journalistic career in 1978,
while he was a history graduate student at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, when he assisted Wayne King with a New
York Times Magazine article called “The Case Against the
Wilmington Ten.” Since then he has written articles, reviews and
previews in Downbeat, Jazz Line, The Spectator Magazine, The
Urban Journal, The Carolina Times, The Daily Tar Heel,The
Independent Weekly, The Wilmington Star News, The Wilmington
Journal, Encore Magazine and Reggae Report. He has appeared on
"The State of Things" with host Frank Stasio on WUNC-FM, Chapel
Hill, NC and Metro Watch with host Gloria Minott on WPFW-FM,
Washington, D.C. In 1982, while a jazz announcer at WDBS-FM in
Durham, North Carolina, he wrote the liner notes for an album
entitled “The Story Teller” by vocalist Bus Brown (Relate Records).
Later that year, Thomas published The True Story Behind The
Wilmington Ten (a revised edition was published by U.B. & U.S.
Books, Hampton, Virginia, in the fall of 1993). His second book,
Rabbit! Rabbit! Rabbit!: A Tale of the Wilmington Incident of
February 1971 was published February 2006. Larry is currently
working on an historical study of The Barn: Wilmington, North
Carolina’s Jazz Mecca (1941—1945). He is also the author of "The
Lady Who Shot Lee Morgan," an exclusive critically-acclaimed
article posted on his blog as well as websites like Women in Jazz
South Florida, The Listening Group of D.C. and the Dutch-based
keepswinging.blogspot.com. Thomas has also presented his
informative historical lecture--The Carolina Jazz Connection with
Larry Reni Thomas--at universities, colleges, schools, and public
places since 2008.
Thomas is the founder and project director of Larry Thomas &
Associates, Inc., a volunteer, non-profit, tax-exempt, cultural arts
organization, dedicated to the jazz and Caribbean cultures. The
primary purpose is to elevate the cultural awareness of the
community by propagating, promoting and presenting these two
vital, vibrant art forms to the public. Larry was also an active
member of the now defunct IAJE, (The International Association
for Jazz Education), served on the board of directors of the North
Carolina Jazz Network and the Triangle Jazz Society.
Show Time: Sundays 9-12 mid
DJ / Host:
Larry Thomas
Thomas has a M.A. in history from the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill and has done further study at UNC’s
graduate school of Journalism. He was a jazz announcer with
WHQR-FM, Wilmington, North Carolina, from 1984-1994; station
manager of WWIL-AM (1990); an evening jazz announcer, interim
station manager, program director and producer for WNCU-FM,
Durham, North Carolina from 1995 to 2003 and a jazz announcer
at WXYC-FM, WXDU-FM and WCOM-FM. Larry also taught History
at Shaw University Cape (1989-94) in Wilmington and Durham,
North Carolina, and at Omuteko Gwamaziima, an African-centered
charter school in Durham. His interests are writing, reading,
traveling, jogging and music. His wife, Candace, is a fiber artist,
whose work, "Moonchild" (an abstract portrait of the late jazz
pianist/composer Brother Yusuf Salim) appeared as a part of
Textural Rhythms: Constructing the Jazz Tradition, Contemporary
African-American Quilts, at the American Folk Art Museum, New
York City in 2009.