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IN MEMORY OF TWO MEN OF LOCAL MUSIC SCENE

Date: November 25, 1999 Edition(s): ALL
Page: 8 Section: CITY LIFE
Column: AN APPRECIATION

Source: JERI ROWE Staff Writer

I gave up the fast lane for a blacktop county road

Just gave up all that thought about the motherlode.
- ``Paint the Town Beige,'' Robert Earl Keen

I'll miss Wilson Thomas and John Stephenson. They died this month, and I think a little bit of Greensboro went with them.

They were members of Greensboro's entertainment family. Stephenson sold records; Thomas sold radio. For more than two decades, they attracted a community of friends and admirers by doing what they loved without pretense and fanfare.

They also sprang from the same seed. They were fiercely independent and noncorporate. They were two children of the '60s who wore their free-spirit attitude as easily as their shoulder-length hair, well-worn jeans and lop-sized grins.

They died, ironically, within a week of one another, Thomas on Nov. 17, Stephenson on Nov. 23. Both were 52.

``These were two people who operated outside the envelope,'' says Dusty Dunn, a longtime radio personality now on WWBG (1470 AM). ``They did things their own way and made a name for themselves, but they had their whole life ahead of them at the same time.

``It's just sad. You look at life, and everything comes in threes. In this case, two is enough.''

Thomas, a native of Burlington, was born Thomas Wilson Sykes III. His relatives called him Tommy. But everyone in and around radio called him Wilson or Wilson Thomas or simply ``Python,'' as in a gravely, back-of-the-throat growl, ``PYYYYYYTHON.''

Joel Waxman remembers those days. It was the early 1970s. He'd ride up to his WCOG (1320 AM) to see the DJs. Then, he saw his favorite coming down the hallway, the skinny guy with a black hair halfway down his back. It was Wilson Thomas.

``Hey, what's happening,'' Thomas told him as he passed by.

``That was the biggest thing in my life to me,'' says Waxman, now 38, a regional promotions manager for MCA Records and a pallbearer at Thomas' funeral. ``I used to listen to the radio at home on a Sears record player, and I wanted to be just like him.

``I did everything in life because of Wilson Thomas.''

Thomas loved radio. He jumped into AM radio in the late 1960s, a time of free-form formats and album-oriented rock. He was a high-energy DJ who screamed into the microphone, preached his love for Neil Young and signed off everything with, ``This is the mighty PYYYYYYTHON.''

As AM radio changed, he stuck with it. He remained a recognizable radio voice on four local radio stations, most recently with WKEW (1400 AM). He turned into a radio activist. He interviewed newsmakers and pushed issues like cleaning up public access television.

He also turned into a picture of responsibility. He was a single parent, a father whose world revolved around two things: his job in radio and his daughter, Heather.

Stephenson, a native of Murfreesboro, a farming town in eastern North Carolina, had a similar determination. Back in 1976, he left a sales job with Carolina Power & Light and started his own record store in Greensboro to push local music and create smarter customers.

He and two college buddies opened School Kids Records and Tapes on Mendenhall Street. The cinder-block building next to College Hill Sundries had no air conditioning, no front door, no checkout counter and no cash register. Just a change box and a slew of albums for $3.99.

But Stephenson loved music, ever since he huddled underneath his bedcovers in Murfreesboro, listening to AM radio play the latest in rock 'n' roll music. When customers would walk in and ask about music, he'd often say, ``I think you need to hear this.' ''

Lynn Gladden, just back from graduate school in Washington, was one of those early customers. She came in looking for anything. She discovered Count Basie, Laura Nyro, Little Feat and Joe Turner.

``He found a job that he loved, and he felt like he could change people's lives,'' says Gladden, who now runs her own substance-abuse treatment agency.

Stephenson moved his store twice and renamed it Skids CDs. His store became the headquarters for gospel music and home-brewed beer supplies. But he also remained true to his mission, to push local music and his store's own slogan, ``Let the music keep your spirits high.''

You knew that right away, every time you stepped into Stephenson's store. He'd be there maybe in a T-shirt and jeans with his graying hair pulled back in a ponytail, selling his home-brew products and telling people about the newest tunes to hear.

``He always wanted to broaden people's horizons because he felt you couldn't keep something neat to yourself,'' says Diane Stephenson, his wife of 17 years. ``He felt you had to let it out and let it go so people can say, 'Damn, John, that guitar riff was awesome.' ''

Death crept up on both of them earlier this year. For Thomas, it started with a back pain. He chalked it up to sitting too much in front of a computer, doing billing for WKEW. Instead, a doctor told him, it was cancer.

For Stephenson, it was a headache he couldn't shake. He went to see a doctor right after Valentine's Day and heard a tumor the size of a ping-pong ball was discovered in his brain. The doctor told him the prognosis didn't look good.

``A friend of mine told me last night, 'Diane, I don't know if I would've done as well as John if I knew I was getting ready to die,' '' Diane Stephenson says. ``But John told me, 'I am going to die the way I lived.' ''

Hundreds of people remembered Stephenson on Friday. They filled the Blandwood Carriage House and heard selections Stephenson picked himself, including Robert Earl Keen's ``Paint the Town Beige.''

Hundreds of people remembered Thomas two Saturdays ago, underneath a cloudless sky at Alamance Memorial Park. They remembered the man who told several of them, ``I'll see you in heaven.''

One of those people was Michelle Moore.

``There is an empty place where he used to be,'' says Moore, who worked with Thomas at WKEW. ``But with any death, it just makes you appreciate the people you have left and the people who you love.''

A nice thought for Thanksgiving. I hope you think so, too.

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