Son Thomas

James "Son Ford" Thomas earned his nickname for the clay tractors he modeled as a boy, copying the animals his uncle sculpted. Born on a farm near Eden in 1926, he moved to Leland as a teenager and played juke joints around Leland and Greenville through the 1960s. In the 1970s he played campuses, including Tougaloo in 1973 and Yale from 1973 to 1976, and festivals in Norway and Germany. He recorded in the United States, Holland, West Germany and Italy. His sculpture and his guitar both grew from the Delta folk traditions he learned from his uncle.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Greenville Levee and the 1927 Flood — 9.8 mi
  The Mississippi River levee at Greenville, where thousands of mostly Black refugees camped in the flood of April 1927 and where the Department of Archives and History has placed markers.
• Winterville Mounds — 11 mi
  A Mississippian ceremonial center north of Greenville, built by hand from about AD 1000, with a 55-foot Temple Mound and twelve of its original twenty-three mounds still standing.
• B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center — 15 mi
  A museum built around the brick cotton gin in Indianola where B.B. King worked in the 1940s, with his grave in a memorial garden on the grounds.
• Lake Chicot State Park — 17 mi
  A state park on the largest natural lake in Arkansas, a 20-mile oxbow of the Mississippi River that was cleaned up and reopened after decades of silt.

More markers nearby

• Johnny Winter — steps away
• Tyrone Davis — steps away
• Birthplace of Kermit the Frog — steps away
• Ruby's Nite Spot — 0.2 mi