Soul icon Irma Thomas on the Stones, segregation and survival: ‘Restaurants refused to serve us – we lived on sardines and crackers'

The Guardian

26-05-2025

Irma Thomas greets me at the front door of the ranch house she shares with her husband and manager Emile Jackson. For a singer celebrated as the 'Soul Queen of New Orleans', I'm somewhat surprised her home isn't more, well, palatial. Graceland this isn't.
Although Thomas, 84, has enjoyed hit records, Grammy awards, international tours, critical praise and the loyal devotion of her home city, she has never experienced the largesse that comes with sustained stardom. Instead, she has her health, a 50-year marriage, great-grandchildren and a stunning new album, Audience With the Queen, created with Galactic, the esteemed New Orleans electro-funkers.
Thomas is one of the last of the best, an African American soul singer who, forged by gospel, overcame discrimination and a brutal music industry to achieve enduring greatness. She scored her first hit aged 18 in 1959 but never enjoyed the huge success of her contemporaries Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight. No matter: everyone from the Rolling Stones to Otis Redding and Beverley Knight has sung her songs (and praises). Bonnie Raitt, now a close friend, says of Thomas, 'She's a legend. She's as good today as she was the day she came out of the church singing.'
I mention to Thomas the praise that now trails her and she cocks an eyebrow and says: 'I guess it's nice people say such things while I'm still here.' Irma, I'm learning, isn't one for blandishments. That said, when I tell her Audience With the Queen is a stunning return after a 17-year absence she agrees. 'The guys in Galactic had been talking about doing an album with me for a while,' Thomas recalls, as we settle in a living room decorated with her many awards. 'I had to say: 'Listen, I am not getting any younger – let's do this!' And, to their credit, they made a really good job of it.'
Indeed they did; Audience With the Queen blends electronic arrangements with Thomas's gospel-steeped vocal to create yet another feather in her crown. 'I'm finally getting my flowers. About time too.'
Born Irma Lee in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, in 1941, she and her family shifted to New Orleans when she was an infant. 'I grew up in the city but, between age four and nine, I lived with my relatives, real country people. I used to help pick strawberries on my uncle's farm; I ate as many as I picked! That kind of upbringing has held me in good stead over the years.'
Getting pregnant aged 14 curtailed Thomas's education and a shotgun marriage to her child's father quickly collapsed. Aged 15 she was a solo mother who worked as dishwasher. By the age of 18 she had remarried, given birth to two more children and become a waitress at the Pimlico club where Tommy Ridgely, a band leader who helped shape the city's R&B sound, held a residency. Thomas, never lacking in confidence, told Ridgely she was a better singer than his band's vocalist. He invited Thomas on stage to prove herself and she seized the opportunity. While the club's patrons applauded her, Thomas was fired for neglecting her job.
Sensing greatness, Ridgley took her to Joe Ruffino at Ron Records. There she recorded the storming R&B tune Don't Mess With My Man, written by Dorothy LaBostrie, who had co-written Tutti Frutti for Little Richard. 'I'd gone from a dishwasher earning 50 cents a night, to a waitress on $5 a night, so when I was offered $50 a night to be a singer, I signed on!'
Fronting Ridgley's band, Thomas worked one-nighters across the south and the eastern seaboard, playing the chitlin' circuit (the name given to a loose network of Black-owned clubs) and white college fraternity parties. It was a hard grind, made more difficult by segregation's privations and raucous audiences: one night a drunken student accidentally kicked Thomas's microphone, knocking out her front teeth.
'Segregation meant there were often no hotels we could stay in, so we'd drive four or five hours back to New Orleans,' she says. 'Restaurants wouldn't serve us, so we lived on sardines and crackers. That's the way things were.'
Thomas isn't one to moan. Instead she speaks directly, refusing to suffer fools or tolerate dishonesty. Unhappy with her royalty payments, Thomas refused to continue recording for Ruffino. She would begin a working relationship with the famed pianist, songwriter and producer Allen Toussaint, and go on to sign for Imperial Records in Los Angeles, where she began recording with a crack team of session musicians and arrangers now celebrated collectively as the 'Wrecking Crew'. Her magnificent run of 45s included I Wish Somebody Would Care, a song Thomas wrote, which became her biggest US hit.
'I wrote that because my then husband really resented me pursuing my career as a singer and made things extremely difficult. I was on the verge of doing something that would have sent me to prison … instead, I left him.' She continued to pursue her career thanks in part to 'loving parents who did a lot of babysitting and a network of supportive women. Having children kept me grounded; I couldn't go out to party or take drugs because I had to get home to my kids.'
In 1964, she recorded Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand), a song co-written by the young Randy Newman. Its one of Thomas's most striking vocal performances, her mournful voice conveying an eerie beauty, yet it struggled to No 52 on the US Top 100. The British Invasion of the American charts was under way, with US pop radio now championing Anglo bands, many of whom were singing songs by Black American artists, rather than the originals. A case in point being when the Rolling Stones covered Time Is on My Side, the B-side of Anyone Who Knows What Love Is, only weeks after Thomas's version was released. The Stones' version is effective, although Jagger copied Irma's vocal, ad-libs and all, in its entirety – a pale imitation.
'I didn't mind the Stones recording the song,' says Thomas, 'what I did resent was when audiences would request I 'sing the Stones song'. Well, no thank you. So I stopped singing it.'
A subsequent UK tour in 1966 was badly organised and saw Thomas lose 15lbs and her voice for three months. 'I had no one looking after things for me and found myself singing night after night – and some matinees – for around three weeks. I had a very basic British backing band and went everywhere in an old van. It was exhausting and debilitating. I was told by a voice doctor that if I ever wanted to sing again I couldn't speak for three months. So I didn't. Which was really difficult, especially when you have small children.'
The 60s weren't swinging for Thomas. Instead her career went into freefall: dropped by Liberty Records, she forlornly sought work as a backing vocalist on LA recording sessions. Thomas settled in Oakland, California, got a job in a department store, singing only on weekends. 'Singing is my vocation,' Thomas says, 'but I was a mom first and needed to create a stable environment for my kids. And seeing them get an education encouraged me to go to night school. Later on I got a business diploma, which helped me negotiate contracts.' While she recorded for Chess and Atlantic Records, as well as working with maverick soul songwriter-producer Jerry 'Swamp Dogg' Williams Jr, her career was constantly sabotaged by music industry machinations. 'Music's a tough industry,' she says, 'especially if you won't sign whatever they put in front of you. I didn't want people to own me, so they called me 'difficult'. Well, maybe I am. Better that than being taken advantage of.'
By the mid-70s, Thomas determined that New Orleans at least still appreciated its Soul Queen. Returning home led to marrying Emile Jackson – 'third time lucky', she says of the man who is still her husband today – and getting plenty of work. Her career rebirth began in 1983 when UK label Ace issued Time Is on My Side, a compilation of her 1961-64 singles. The album sold strongly and introduced Thomas to a new generation – British northern soul fans started to seek out the Lion's Den, a club she and Emile ran – while Jim Jarmusch chose Thomas's It's Raining to soundtrack Roberto Benigni and Nicoletta Braschi's affecting waltz in Down By Law. Then Scott Billington of Rounder Records, a Massachusetts label dedicated to American folk/roots music, approached Thomas about recording new material. From 1986 to 2008, Billington produced 10 albums that re-established Thomas as one of America's finest contemporary vocalists, and saved her from what she describes as 'a life singing It's Raining every night in a hotel bar'.
Almost 20 years ago, Hurricane Katrina decimated much of New Orleans. Thomas and her husband were out of town when the hurricane hit, flooding their home and ruining the Lion's Den. Recorded mere months after Katrina, Thomas's 2006 album After the Rain won a Grammy. But, after 2008's majestic Simply Grand album, she again found herself without a record label, while the collapse of CD sales meant the music industry again declined to back a singer who was written off as 'old school'.
'I don't feel bitter about things,' says Thomas. 'I'm established, and I only sing when I want for the fee that Emile insists is right. If no one wanted a new Irma Thomas album so be it.'
Galactic, who command a wide US audience, determined the world did want a new Irma Thomas album. 'I'm used to recording with musicians in the studio,' notes Thomas, 'while Galactic programme the beats and music then got me in to sing. A strange experience for me, but it worked. I never previously considered myself a protest singer but, things being the way they are, means I got to voice my displeasure.'
Thomas is talking about Lady Liberty, a song where she sings: 'How long can history repeat itself, Lord we need some help / Time to shuffle these cards that we've been dealt and free ourselves.' Lady Liberty, I suggest, nails Trump's America. 'I don't even want to say his name,' she replies, her voice indignant. 'I grew up with segregation and now he and his people are trying to turn back time and ruin everything good about this nation. I am furious.' The 'flowers' she mentioned have been blooming in recent years: Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand) became a recurring motif in Black Mirror, giving Thomas 90m streams and sparking interest in her back catalogue. 'The first thing I knew about it was when I got a phone call saying: 'Irma, there's a big cheque coming your way.' I ain't never heard of Black Mirror but I'm sure glad it exists.' There have been two documentaries about her life and an authorised biography will be published next year.
Then at New Orleans' Jazzfest 2024 festival, headliners the Rolling Stones invited Thomas to join them on stage to perform Time Is on My Side. Watching the veteran Brits and the Soul Queen of New Orleans unite is a treat – Jagger tells the audience that the song they're about to perform was first sung by Thomas in 1964, then they trade off verses with aplomb. Were you happy as you look when singing with the Stones, I ask her.
'I was,' she says. 'Because Mick told the crowd that I did it first and they learned it from me. He gave me respect. That's all I ask for. I've been through a lot since 1964, so it felt good to get that kind of acknowledgment in front of their audience. Real good.'
My audience with the queen is up: Thomas wants to have lunch with Emile, read the Bible, watch a gameshow and prepare for headlining the French Quarter festival the next day, performing with a voice that Raitt says is still as 'beautiful, sultry and powerful as it was on her first records'. On stage and off, time remains on Irma Thomas's side.
Audience With the Queen is out now on Tchuop-Zilla Records. Garth Cartwright travelled to New Orleans as a guest of Explore Louisiana.