Bill Joe Thomas于1942年8月7日在Hugo, Okalahoma出生。他的父母有三个孩子。小时候经常搬家,童年基本是在Houston Texas。兄弟们都喜欢棒球和教堂的唱诗班。因为当时在棒球队太多人叫Bill Joe这名字,所以他就开始叫缩写B.J。
当他在高中时,在哥哥的劝说下加入了本地乐队The Triumphs,当是他担任主唱。这个本地乐队有出几首出名的歌像The Lazy Man和I Got A Feeling等。然后就得到Steve Tyrell的赏识,之后就开始在全国范围内发行专集。
B.J在Houston认识了他的妻子,他喜欢妻子的原因是她妻子张的像她的姐姐Judy.于1968年12月9日在Las Vegas,Nevada结婚。之后生了4个孩子。
在他家庭的劝说下,B.J.终于放弃了酗酒和毒品。当时还是住在Texas.之后和他妻子庆祝35年的结婚纪念日。现在B.J每年还是忙于旅行于美国各州。平时的消遣就是打高尔夫球。
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
B.J. Thomas (born Billy Joe Thomas) straddled the line between pop/rock and country, achieving success in both genres in the late 60s and 70s. At the beginning of his career, he leaned more heavily on rock & roll, but by the mid-70s, he had turned to country music, becoming one of the most successful country-pop stars of the decade.
Thomas began singing while he was a child, performing in church. In his teens, he joined the Houston-based band the Triumphs, who released a number of independent singles that failed to gain any attention. For the groups last single, Thomas and fellow Triumph member Mark Charron wrote Billy and Sue, which was another flop. After Billy and Sue, Thomas began a solo career, recording a version of Hank Williams standard Im So Lonesome I Could Cry with producer Huey P. Meaux. Released by Scepter Records in early 1966, the single became an immediate hit, catapulting to number eight on the pop charts. Although he had a series of moderate follow-up hits, including a re-release of Billy and Sue, Thomas failed to reenter the Top Ten until 1968, when Hooked on a Feeling became a number-five, gold single. The following year, he scored his biggest hit with Burt Bacharach and Hal Davids Raindrops Keep Fallin on My Head, taken from the hit film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It was followed by a string of soft rock hits in the next two years, including Everybodys Out of Town, I Just Cant Help Believing, No Love at All, and Rock and Roll Lullaby, which featured guitarist Duane Eddy and the vocal group the Blossoms.
After Rock and Roll Lullaby, Scepter Records went out of business and B.J. Thomas headed to Paramount Records. At Paramount, Thomas had no hits, prompting the singer to pursue a new country-pop direction at ABC Records. (Hey Wont You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song, his first single for ABC, became his second number-one record on the pop charts, as well as establishing a country career for the vocalist. For the next decade, he continued to have hits on the country charts, with a couple of songs — most notably Dont Worry Baby — crossing over into the pop charts. During this period, he switched record companies at a rapid pace, but it did nothing to slow the pace of his hits. Thomas hit his country peak in 1983 and 1984, when he had the number-one hits Whatever Happened to Old Fashioned Love and New Looks From an Old Lover, as well as the Top Ten hits The Whole Worlds in Love When Youre Lonely and Two Car Garage. Throughout the 80s, B.J. Thomas recorded a number of hit gospel records for Myrrh concurrently with his country hits.
At the end of the 80s, the hits began to dry up for Thomas, but he continued to tour, and put out the occasional country and gospel record in the 90s.