I made the first record that made money for them, me and Carla.” Just as with Sun, said Rufus, “I was the beginning of Stax. He persuaded Stax owner Jim Stewart to cut a duet on him and his eighteen-year-old daughter Carla, it was a hit. However, in 1960 when a little label moved to South Memphis, Thomas sensed an opportunity. Phillips switched focus from Thomas to Presley. The success, however, spelled doom for Thomas as an eighteen-year-old Elvis Presley made his way to the Memphis Recording Service to make a record. “Bear Cat (The Answer to Hound Dog)” was the witty response to the Big Mama Thornton original, going to Number Three on the R&B charts and giving Sun Records a national hit. However, when Phillips started his own Sun label, it was Thomas who had the fledgling company’s first hit in 1953. When Sam Phillips opened his Memphis Recording Service in 1950, Rufus was one of the first to show up at its door but his recordings released on the Chess label, were not commercially successful. After high school, Thomas had travelled all over the South with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels tent show picking crucial antics, which was to serve him well in the entertainment business. Just as Thomas was mentored, he also was a crucial mentor to many important Memphis blues, rock, and soul musicians.
When Williams moved on to other things, Thomas became the MC, later rejoining Williams at WDIA, “the Mother Station of the Negroes,” where Williams had become the first black DJ on the first all-black station in the nation in 1949. King, Bobby Bland, Junior Parker, Ike Turner and Roscoe Gordon. Williams, history teacher and entertainer extraordinaire, who schooled him in both comedy routines and academics and, after graduation, brought Rufus in as his sidekick hosting Amateur Night at the Palace Theater on Beale Street, which helped showcase the emerging skills of such influential figures as B.B. Washington High School where he met fabled Professor Nat D.