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Sept13, 2009-Sept20, 2009 |
Long live the Soul Queen of New Orleans
Irma Thomas is still going strong, 50 years on
By Kerry Doole
Originally Published: 2009-08-30
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Irma Thomas
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The title of Soul Queen of New Orleans is a hard-earned one for veteran soul singer Irma Thomas. That’s shown by the fact that the superb new collection of her material that bears that name is subtitled “The 50th Anniversary Celebration.” Yes, it has been a full half-century since the now 68-year-old Thomas began recording — it’s a milestone worth celebrating.
Her tough-yet-tender voice remains in top shape, and Thomas has continued to put out high-quality albums for a loyal audience. She scored a number of pop and r ’n’ b hits in the ’60s (including a pre-Rolling Stones version of “Time Is On My Side”), and it has been gratifying to see her work receive greater attention in recent years.
She told Tandem recently that an unlikely source was responsible for that. “I do believe it was Hurricane Katrina,” she says from her New Orleans home. “That is the one time a storm helped me. There was the unknown factor that no one seemed to know where I was then [she was performing in Texas when the hurricane hit]. I think that brought some needed attention to me as an artist. A lot of younger people discovered me then.”
Katrina affected Thomas very personally. Her home and her nightclub were flooded, and she and her husband had to move out of the city for some time. She is thrilled to be back in New Orleans and observing a still gradual improvement in life there.
Her 2006 album, After The Rain, earned Thomas a richly-deserved Grammy Award. “I was also inducted into The Blues Hall of Fame. I never thought that would happen either. I was never really categorized in one vein of music all these years, so it was humbling to see someone recognize that you have a viable talent.”
She is pleased to see fellow veteran soul singers like Mavis Staples and Betty LaVette also earn greater respect. “These are all great talented women and we’ve all paid our dues and not got the recognition. But I’m not bitter about it — it’s just the way things are. First of all, they assume that because you’re getting older, you’re not as good as you used to be. They don’t realize that some of us who are maturing have a better grasp of what is going on than the young folks who think they know it all. They haven’t lived anything. They don’t know what they’re singing about; they don’t have a clue what the blues is really about.”
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