Thomas Stewart's name pops up several times in the production and songwriting credits on Martha High's solo album on Salsoul Records. Stewart produced the album and co-wrote every song featured, except for a remake of the Emotions' Don't Ask My Neighbor, with his two colleagues, Harold Daniels and Julian Chatman.

Thomas Stewart was born on November 19, 1939, in Gadsden, AL, where he attended South Gadsden Elementary School. He imitated Al Jolson at the Gadsden Kitty Club in the Carter Theater for four weeks as a young teen. Musically inclined, he studied and played the tuba at Carver High in Gadsden, but could also tinkle the ivories. Stewart completed school in Birmingham, AL, where he lived from 1948 to 1957; by this time, Stewart's musical resumé also included the trumpet, sax, clarinet, and tech horn (similar to a baritone).

Fess Whatley trained Stewart; Whatley also taught Erskine Hawkins, Big Joe Alexander, Paul Bascombe, Hi C Foster, Sun Ra (previously known as Herman Blount), and Eddie Baccus (a blind organ player who now resides in Cleveland, OH). Whatley taught music at Industrial High in Birmingham, which at the time was the largest populated high school in America, with more than 3,500 students stomping its hallways. Alvin Stump Robinson, the band director at Parker High, was also influential in Stewart's development. Evelyn Lawler, track star Carl Lewis' mother, attended school with Stewart and was a track star herself.

Stewart enrolled at Alabama State College without knowing how he was going to pay tuition. The problem solved itself when he joined the Bama State Collegians, a dance band formed in 1929 who at various times featured Erskine Hawkings, Avery Parrish, Joe Herman, Sam Taylor, Julian Dash, Benny Powell, Vernall Fournier, and Clarence Carter. The popular band made enough money to fund Stewart's way through four years of college.

Stewart studied arranging under John Dickins, a classical composer. Stewart was an encyclopedia on music arrangers and could rattle off the names of all the musical notation writers in Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York. In 1956 he played with Roy Hamilton, who, according to Stewart, was a sickly man.

He taught high school from 1961 to 1969 at Fayette in St. Clair County, but still found time to travel with Willie Hightower, L.C. Cook, and Junior Parker due to his long summer vacations. In 1969 he moved to Atlanta, GA, and taught in Fayetteville, GA; he also worked for Morris Brown College doing band arrangement -- something he also did for Eula Clifford, The Mighty Hannibal, Sandy Adams, and Langston George (an ex-Pip and Gladys Knight's cousin). Most of these arranging assignments took place in Jessie Jones' Tregar Records, located at 99-1/2 Hunter St. in Atlanta.

During the '70s, he worked at the Gold Lounge accompanying the likes of Gladys Knight the Pips and the Tams. In 1971 he went on the road with Johnnie Taylor's show, which also featured Jackie Moore; King Floyd; Z.Z. Hill; and the Stylistics, who were hot with You're a Big Girl Now. He was the chief arranger for a television show in 1972 called #Nightlife South, which ran for 25 weeks. The following year he did the charts for The Burning of Atlanta LP by The Spirit of Atlanta on Buddah Records. That same year (1973) he connected with GRC/Aware Records and arranged tracks recorded by John Edwards (who later joined the Spinners) and Loletta Holloway, one of soul's most dynamic voices.

He taught jazz and did band arrangements at Morehouse College from 1974 to 1985, but found time to tour with Johnnie Taylor on his Disco Lady Tour in 1976, and also served as Ted Taylor's musical director. He arranged for Luther Ingram in 1977, associating with the notorious Dino Boom Boom and the late Johnny Baylor (Ingram's manager and the owner of Ko Ko Records); Dino and Baylor, and their thuggish ways, are blamed for the demise of Stax Records. Dino, who frightened everybody at Stax with his one-armed pushups and penchant for violence, later became a preacher at the Abyssinia Baptist Church in New York.

The Martha High album was done on spec. High toured with James Brown as a backing vocalist and originally sang with the Four Jewels (who later became the Jewels), but stayed with Brown after the other members left. Brown was going to do the album, but decided to let Stewart do it. Joe Cayre of Salsoul Records wanted a James Brown sound -- Stewart obliged by knocking the LP out in one day. He met High the day of the session. The record doesn't have the typical stringy Salsoul sound because it was recorded in Atlanta, not Philadelphia. Cayre released the album, undoctored, from the tape Stewart submitted. It was around this time that he produced Ripple, a self-contained band who made a little noise with The Beat Goes On, and Southside Coalition, made up of some of Stewart's former students from Archer High in Atlanta.

He worked with the late Major Lance on two albums, toured with the Tams in 1983, and did arrangements for Betty Wright's The Lack of Communication album. In 1990, he played with what is believed to have been the first black symphony orchestra under conductor John Peek. He moved from Atlanta to Birmingham in 1992, where he lived with his wife, Francina (a substitute teacher), and daughter Francetta. He also taught band classes at West End High School. ~ Andrew Hamilton, Rovi