Irma Thomas
Where else but New Orleans would the city council types consider it a function of their civic duty to designate an official “Soul Queen?” But, then again, no city but New Orleans can lay claim to Irma Thomas. Twice married and the mother of four at age nineteen, Irma released her first hit – a raw and world-wise cover of (You Can Have My Husband, But Please) Don't Mess With My Man." Not exactly the type of puppy-love, heart-throb ballads that were being waxed by her “girl group” contemporaries, the song was promptly pulled off the air for being “too suggestive.”
Irma Thomas began her career sitting in with Tommy Ridgley’s band while working as a cocktail waitress at New Orleans’ Pimlico Club. When she got fired for spending more time singing than waiting on customers, Ridgley set up an audition with local Minit Records, where a young Allen Toussaint had recently been hired as the label’s chief songwriter and producer. Her collaboration with Toussaint produced a run of brilliant singles, including “It's Raining" (revived many years later in the soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s cult classic Down by Law) "Cry On,” “I Done Got Over It,” and “Ruler of My Heart," which Otis Redding later reworked as “Pain in My Heart." Her 1963 autobiographical release “Wish Someone Would Care," is a wrenchingly intimate cry of a woman with no one to turn to. Although it was not a big hit at the time, it remains one of her most enduring – and most requested – songs. But it’s not the type of success she cares to repeat. “I hope I’m never angry enough to write another song like that one,” she says today. Ironically, “Break-A-Way," the flip-side to “Wish Someone Would Care," scored a massive hit, followed by “Time Is on My Side,” which became the first breakout hit for The Rolling Stones who replicated Irma’s original version almost note-for-note. Then, in 1969, hurricane Camile destroyed a number of New Orleans nightclubs where Irma regularly performed. She relocated to California and took a day job in the auto parts department at a Montgomery Ward while she raised her four children as a single mother.
But New Orleans pulled her back in the late ’70s when she was invited to appear at the annual Jazz & Heritage Festival. Today Irma Thomas sings in her chuch choir. She and her husband/manager Emile Jackson are owners of the Lion’s Den, a nightclub on Gravier Street where she sings, and sometimes cooks for her friends. Irma insists that her music falls in the tradition of age-old spirituals. Her songs teach you the things you need to survive – in life and in love. And it may be that you won’t always catch the full meaning unless you’ve lived through some troubled times yourself.