Nothing is stronger than the human spirit. Nothing. It creates civilizations of unending wonder, defies the odds of destructive despair and allows citizens of the world to move forward. It also provides each of us the strength needed to face hardships, accept love and let the power of human kindness enter our hearts. Without spirit, the world does not exist. Instead, it becomes a mechanical place of missing meaning.
These are trying times. It often feels like the boundaries of what we can withstand are being built higher and higher. Countries are being split apart, trust disappearing faster than can be tallied and a darkness descending on what we fear the future will look like. It is the perfect time for persuasive passion, a time to look at others from the past and find in their center a formidable feeling of joy. No one fills that bill better than the soul queen of New Orleans Ms. Irma Thomas. She has been singing in the clubs of the Crescent City and the concert halls of the world for over 60 years, never blinking in the face of adversity and staring down seeming failure with such strength there can be no question she will survive. Like her hometown itself, Thomas knows that the only way to look is forward, and to gather the goodness all around her like the gold it truly is. The singer has made recordings of eternal life that will be sung as long as there are voices to sing them and there are ears to hear. The woman has pointed the way like the national treasure she is.
Irma Thomas was born Irma Lee in Ponchatoula, Louisiana in 1941. It didn’t take long for the short move to New Orleans, finding in that mysterious city a brand new life. By the time she was 19 years old, Thomas had married twice and had four children. And also had started singing. There was something wide-open in her voice, like she didn’t have to filter it to express the kind of winning soul being woven into the fabric of new American life. Her first single, “Don’t Mess with My Man” captured perfectly the changing culture of the country. After World War II, freedom was the ticket. Evil had been knocked down in Europe and Japan and the population was ready to roll. New Orleans, no stranger to freedom or rock & roll, laid out the red carpet for singers like Roy Brown, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Lloyd Price, Larry Williams and so many more, and it seemed like the entire town was dancing in the streets and constantly lighting up the night with the sounds of blasting saxes, devious drumming and rollicking piano. The future had arrived, and nobody could sit still.
There are parts of New Orleans bathed in darkness, like life there didn’t need to be exposed to the prying eyes of normal civilians. The music of early bandleaders Tommy Ridgely and Dave Bartholomew were offering a soundtrack to offset the coming conformity of life under President Dwight Eisenhower and the worries of the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. The sounds of the Crescent City, once so aptly described as “easeful antics of absolute insignificance,” handed a permanent pass from those concerns. Instead, it was anything goes up and down Canal Street once Roy Brown unleashed “Good Rocking Tonight,” Fats Domino let loose with “The Fat Man” and Little Richard ripped apart the radio airwaves with “Tutti Frutti.” This was a psychic earthquake called rock & roll, and nothing would ever be the same again.
Irma Thomas had the great good fortune to fall in with the local Minit Records in the early ’60s, and an amazing collaboration with songwriter-pianist Allen Toussaint. Her voice felt like it was born to sing his songs, including “Ruler of My Heart,” “It’s Raining” and so many more. On New Orleans days when it seemed like the rain would never stop, Thomas’ 45s were played constantly on local radio, barroom juke boxes and sung by street car riders and short order cooks. They were everywhere, and perfectly captured the sublime craziness of the city.
There is something permanently askew about New Orleans. It could be the early mixture of cultures from the French and Spanish mingling with Native Americans there. Or maybe it had to do with all the slaves arriving from Africa, bought and sold in open-air markets that branded the spirit of America with shame forever. Being a port city brought the addictive temptations for those with the appetites, not to mention the battle cry cacophony of foreign musics. Add in the treacherous summer humidity and heat and it’s no wonder it got tagged “the city that care forgot” all those years ago. The cultural rule book had been torn up and set afire from the start and there was no going back.
Irma Thomas was likely looking for bigger pastures when she left Minit Records and signed with Imperial. She always had an eye for stepping up, and with a family to care for a new label might be the boost she needed to make a real national impact. Her first song for Imperial in 1964 was one she wrote herself, a rarity, as she reached as far down inside herself as anyone can go. Titled “Wish Someone Would Care,” it starts: “Sitting home alone thinkin’ about my past / wondering how I made it and how long it’s gonna last / success has come to lots of them and failure’s always there / time time waits for no one and I wish someone would care…” It completely grabs the question marks of anyone who tries to make a stand, and conveys the feeling of loneliness of being out there on your own. It ends: “Some folks think you’re happy when you wear your smile / what about your tribulations and all of your trials / smiles smiles hide a lot of things the good the bad the hurt all of this goes too / and I wish how I wish how I wish someone would care…” Thomas’ voice soars with pain, a cry for help, sounding like a walk alone down Decatur Street in the French Quarter at four in the morning. It would go on to be the biggest hit of her life.
Thomas’ follow-up on Imperial in 1964 started with good omen. Co-written by a young Randy Newman, “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand),” began to get overshadowed by the B-side, “Time Is on My Side.” Released shortly before the Rolling Stones’ version, the song was co-written by Jerry Ragovoy and originally released by trombonist Kai Winding. But once the Rolling Stones’ single started climbing the charts, Thomas’ effort for Imperial got less and less notice. Finally taking a job at a Montgomery-Ward department store, she continued to record and while never giving up, she was probably wondering what happened to all that promise. Still, Irma Thomas, made of steel and possessed by a voice from heaven, trusted something good was always around the corner. Sessions in Muscle Shoals, an unreleased album for Atlantic Records and even a concept album produced by Swamp Dogg for his Fungus Records imprint in 1973 threatened to relaunch her, but it was not to be. Returning to New Orleans in 1975 and marrying Emile Jackson, her future manager, the woman quickly solidified her role as Soul Queen of New Orleans, even if the rest of the world didn’t always notice. She was singing with a voice that had grown even stronger with experience, and an emphatic feeling for the unpredictable ups and downs of living that could send chills up and down the body. Along with Jackson, she opened her own nightclub, the Lion’s Den, right next door to their Irma’s Bail Bonds, conveniently located near the New Orleans Parish Prison. The lady didn’t miss a lick.
In 1984 I became once-again possessed by New Orleans music, and produced a concert series at Club Lingerie on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles dubbed “Bill Bentley’s Friday Night in New Orleans.” We’d fly in different singers from the Crescent City, including Lee Dorsey, Ernie K-Doe and Art and Aaron Neville, pairing them with a band producer Harold Battiste had assembled in L.A. called the New Orleans Natives. After seven Friday nights, I thought, “where oh where is Irma Thomas.” Eventually I found her at the Lion’s Den and convinced husband/manager Emile Jackson now was the time for Thomas to return to the West Coast. She hadn’t played there since the ’60s, and that was way too long an absence for the one of the finest soul singers alive. After striking a deal with Jackson, though because of his deep New Orleans patois I had no idea what the actual figures were, Irma Thomas and her ten-piece band lit up the L.A. night like a million klieg lights, blowing the minds of one and all in the room. Fortunately, the finances worked out and when they left the next day to return home, both Thomas and Jackson were beaming. “We’ll be back,” she said, and I knew it was true.
Thanks to the burgeoning popularity of the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the fine foresight of Rounder Records launching their album series “New Orleans/Modern Masters” in 1986 with Irma Thomas, as the ’80s progressed the singer finally starting finding a new standing. She toured the world, an ambassador of that unique creation that has done so much to spread a joyful noise from way down yonder in New Orleans, and her current albums consistently won Grammy Awards and popular acclaim. From the 18-year-old mother of four from Ponchatoula, Louisiana who threatened another woman on her first single, “Don’t Mess with My Man,” to today, a singer of such renown that whenever New Orleans music is mentioned, she, right next to Fats Domino,” is the first person on anyone’s mind, Irma Thomas has proven that it is no accident the human spirit is wisely invested in those with the heart and soul to tend its wondrous gift. Over and over, just like New Orleans did after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Thomas looked within herself for strength, and found a way to unleash a voice capable of sharing eternal truths. On Walter Wolfman Washington’s latest album, Irma Thomas joins her fellow New Orleanian on the song “Even Now.” It is as timeless a testament to the vagaries of love as has ever been recorded. She sings: “I still love you sometimes sometimes I wonder how / but I’m wishing you only the best / yes I guess / we’re even now.” Out in the New Orleans darkness, down Tchoupitoulas Street where the streetlights sputter and riverboats let out a low moan on the nearby Mississippi River, the voice of Irma Thomas reminds us, as it has for 60 years, that love will always live in the human spirit. And for that, we can only say “Amen.”
Bill Bentley