Houston, Texas, is not particularly well known for either jazz music or Civil Rights, but both had a vibrant presence in the Bayou City of the late 1960s. Bubbha Thomas was proof of that. He grew up in Fourth Ward playing basketball and drums, went away to college, then off to war in Korea—where he maneuvered himself into the band to get out of kitchen patrol duty—and then returned to Houston to start his career as Bubbha Thomas and the Lightmen.