It didn’t take long for Archie Thompson to notice the guy at a table near where Thompson and his trio were playing. They were doing their usual blues and jazz gig at the old Croce’s Restaurant in the Gaslamp Quarter downtown. There was an intensity about the dude—as if he were doing some kind of evaluation.
“I thought he was from the IRS,” Thompson says, laughing.
Turns out it was Jerry Andrews, the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in downtown. Andrews was planning to start a jazz vespers service at his church a few blocks away. Someone had informed Andrews that if he wanted modern church music, any garage band would do. But if he wanted jazz, he needed the best. And the best, he was told, was Archie Thompson.
The Jazz Vespers program, with Thompson playing piano and saxophone—sometimes at the same time—ran on Saturday afternoons from 2011 until the end of last year. Now, Thompson and his trio appear at the church on special occasions, such as Easter weekend, when they play John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, and in August, when they do Jazz in the Courtyard, along with the occasional morning service. Thompson is the church’s Jazz Artist in Residence.
He’s also a regular at Eddie V’s Prime Seafood in downtown’s Headquarters at Seaport District. But he spends most of his time recording music for film and television. That scene in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood where Leonardo DiCaprio sings “The Green Door?” That’s Thompson’s arrangement and his piano. Movies, TV series, documentaries—the music in the background is often Thompson. He’s everywhere.
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And then there are his albums—jazz, pop, country, blues, gospel. A new, Quincy Jones–inspired one just dropped in April, titled Makin’ The Scene.
You can see him live at clubs and at church. But it’s highly likely you’ve already heard him. He’s been makin’ the scene for a long time.
