Born in the rural community of Cayce, Mississippi, Rufus moved to Memphis with his family at age two. Rufus made his artistic debut at the age of six playing a frog in a school theatrical production. Much later in life, he would impersonate all kinds of animals: screeching cats, funky chickens, penguins and mournful dogs. By age ten, he was a tap dancer, performing in amateur productions at Memphis' Booker T Washington High School. Rufus attended one semester at Tennessee A&I University, but due to economic conditions left to pursue a career as a professional entertainer, joining up in 1936 with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, an all-black revue that toured the South. He then worked for twenty-two years at a textile plant and didn't leave that job until about 1963, around the time of his Dog hits.
Rufus made his professional singing debut at the Elks Club on Beale Street in Memphis, filling in for another singer at the last minute. He made his first 78 rpm record in 1943 for the Star Talent label in Texas, 'I'll Be a Good Boy', backed with 'I'm So Worried'.
He also became an on-air personality with WDIA, one of the first radio stations in the US to feature an all-black staff and programming geared toward blacks. He became one of the station's most popular DJs. He started at WDIA in 1951 (despite biographies placing his start a year earlier). At WDIA, he hosted an afternoon show called Hoot and Holler. WDIA, featuring an African-American format, was known as 'the mother station of the Negroes' and became an important source of blues and R&B music for a generation, its audience consisting of white as well as black listeners. Thomas's mentor was Nat D Williams, a pioneer black DJ at WDIA as well as Thomas's high school history teacher, columnist for black newspapers and host of an amateur show at Memphis's Palace Theater. For years Thomas himself took hosting duties for the amateur show and in that capacity, is credited with the discovery of BB King.
His celebrity was such that in 1953 he recorded an answer record to Big Mama Thornton's hit, 'Hound Dog' called 'Bear Cat', released on Sun Records. Although the song was the label's first hit, a copyright-infringement suit ensued and nearly bankrupted Sam Phillips' record label. Later, Rufus was one of the African American artists released by Sam Phillips as he oriented his label more toward white audiences and signed the likes of Elvis Presley in the place of the dismissed musicians.
Nevertheless, Rufus remembered spinning Elvis discs on WDIA. Management at the station forbade the DJs from playing Elvis during the years from 1953 to 1956. "They said blacks wouldn't listen to Elvis. I tried to play him, I tried to tell them. No one can speak for a whole group."
At a major WDIA benefit in 1956 Rufus appeared, dressed as Chief Rocking Horse, and led Elvis onto stage in front of an all-black audience, arguing that introductions should be held until the end of the show, lest wild applause ensue. After Elvis did his pelvic gyration that evening, the inevitable frenzy of the kids in the audience did in fact drown out the emcees, proving Rufus right. "After that night," recalled Rufus, "we were allowed to play Elvis."
The prime of Rufus's recording career came in the 1960s and early 1970s, when he was on the Stax roster, having one of the first hit sides at that historic label. At Stax, he recorded songs when he had something to record, as tunes came up, never collecting songs to be done in blocks. Songs were usually recorded in one or two takes, live. No one ever had a good idea which sides would make hits at Stax. The artists had no control over what got released and little of what went on was plotted out or scripted in any way.
Rufus was often backed by Booker T and the MGs or the Bar-Kays, and his bands included many of the era's finest musicians. "I'll tell you a story," Rufus once explained. "Not many people know this one... It was the same club where I later wrote 'Do the Funky Chicken', in Covington, Tennessee. I had two guitar players, I can’t remember the second one’s name at the time, but the first one was a young guy, playin' just terrible, loud, out of tune, all over the place. After a while, I said, 'send him home, I can't use a guitar player who plays like that.' That dude was Jimi Hendrix."
Rufus had a number of hits in the late 1960s and early 1970s, notably a string of songs that were tied to a then-current dance craze: 'Do the Funky Chicken' from 1970, '(Do the) Push and Pull', 'The Breakdown' and 'Do the Penguin'. He performed at Wattstax in 1972, leading a crowd of 40,000 in the 'Funky Chicken'. Highlights of his career included calming an unruly crowd at the early '70s Wattstax Festival, performing with James Brown's band and the knowledge that, along with James Brown and a handful of others, he was a key to the emergence of funk.
He played an important part in the Stax reunion in 1988 and had a small role in the 1989 Jim Jarmusch film Mystery Train.
In 1996 Rufus and William Bell headlined at the Olympics in Atlanta. In September 1997, he thrilled a crowd of fans at the Framingham (Massachusetts) Blues Festival with his performance, which included an updated version of 'Walking the Dog' and completely upstaged the other performers on the bill (including Leon Russell and Levon Helm). Also Thomas toured in California with blues singer Blues Boy Willie of Memphis, Texas.
Until late in his life, he remained an avid listener of music, respecting artists as diverse as Prince, Preston Shannon and Denise Lasalle. A collaboration with alternative band Jon Spencer Blues Explosion was not so successful as his own later recordings.
Rufus Thomas was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001. His last appearance was in the DA Pennebaker-directed documentary Only the Strong Survive (2003) in which he co-starred with his daughter Carla.