The Soul Queen
Every city that matters has a queen, and New Orleans has Irma Thomas. Not the Queen of Pop or the Queen of Rock — the Soul Queen of New Orleans, a title she has held for so long and so rightfully that it would be treason to suggest anyone else. For more than sixty years, Irma Thomas has been the voice of this city's deepest emotions — its heartbreak, its resilience, its joy, and its stubborn refusal to let anything, including a hurricane, silence the music.
Born in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, in 1941, Thomas began singing in a Baptist church choir, which is where most great New Orleans singers begin because the church teaches you things about passion and timing and emotional truth that no conservatory can replicate. She moved to New Orleans as a young woman and quickly established herself in the R&B scene, recording for a series of local labels and building a reputation as a singer of extraordinary power and emotional range.
Fifty Years Before a Grammy
Thomas's career is one of the great stories of persistence in American music. She recorded hit after hit in the 1960s — songs that were beloved in New Orleans and throughout the South but that never quite broke through to the national mainstream. She watched as other artists covered her material and achieved the commercial success that eluded her. The Rolling Stones recorded a version of one of her songs that became far more famous than her original. It was the kind of injustice that would have broken a lesser artist.
But Irma Thomas is not a lesser artist. She kept performing, kept recording, kept showing up at clubs and festivals and anywhere else that would have her. And in 2007, more than fifty years into her career, she finally won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album for After the Rain. It was her first Grammy, and it was richly, absurdly overdue.
Queen of Everything
Thomas's reign extends beyond the recording studio. She has been a member of the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, reigned as queen of Krewe du Vieux — the irreverent, adult-oriented Mardi Gras parade that is the antithesis of corporate carnival — and was featured on the 2008 Jazz Fest poster, an honor reserved for the most significant figures in New Orleans music. She has also been a businesswoman, running her own club, the Lion's Den, in the Seventh Ward, where she performed regularly and presided over her domain with the warmth and authority of someone who has earned every inch of her throne.
Still Singing
What makes Irma Thomas remarkable is not just the quality of her voice, which remains one of the most moving instruments in popular music. It is the endurance. She has survived the ups and downs of the music industry, personal tragedies, and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed her home and her club. She rebuilt, because that is what New Orleanians do, and she kept singing, because that is what Irma Thomas does. The Soul Queen does not abdicate. She reigns.
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