Irma Thomas has reigned as ‘The Soul Queen of New Orleans’ since the 1960s and remains not only a hometown favorite but also an international legend in the annals of rhythm & blues. Born Irma Lee in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, on February 18, 1941, she always loved to sing at home, in church, in school, in talent shows, and finally in the nightclubs and recording studios of New Orleans. She even lost jobs by singing in clubs when she was being paid to waitress, but that led to one of her first professional breaks, when the bandleader at the Pimlico Club, Tommy Ridgley, hired her and took her on the road. She was a young mother of four when her first record, ‘Don’t Mess With My Man’, hit the charts in 1960. Her biggest hit was the soul-baring, self-penned Imperial single ‘Wish Someone Would Care’ in 1964, but the best-known song she recorded was the flip side of another 1964 Imperial 45, ‘Time Is On My Side,’ which became a rock ‘n’ roll classic for the Rolling Stones. A series of less successful records followed, along with a period of semi-retirement from music when she moved to California after Hurricane Camille devastated the Gulf Coast in 1969. Irma has been a fixture on the New Orleans scene since returning home in the 1970s, and began to win wider acclaim again after recording the first in a long series of albums for Rounder in 1985. She and her husband ran a club, the Lions Den on Gravier Street, until another hurricane Katrina, flooded the premises and sent her away from the Crescent City again, but this time only as far as Gonzales, Louisiana. Thomas has been a perennial nominee and frequent winner in the Blues Music Awards.
