New Orleans Soul Queen and Birthday Girl

Man, it's been tough getting back to the blogging after Mardi Gras. But, I've got two tracks up over at HOTG that you can find on Sweet Soul Queen Of New Orleans: The Irma Thomas Collection pictured above. It's one of the better comps of her Minit and Imperial sinlges output.
Other similar ones that may be harder (and more expensive) to find are the Kent (UK) import, Time Is On My Side, and the out of print EMI CD with almost the same title, TIme Is On My Side: The Best of Irma Thomas. These are currently available at amazon.com or the Louisiana Music Factory.

Something Good: The Muscle Shoals Sessions was a great collection of Irma's mostly unreleased session work for Chess recorded at Fame Studio in Muscle Shoals in the late 1960's with the fine house band there. The CD was on Chess/MCA, but is long out of print and ridiculously expensive online, it appears. Seek it out where previously owned music software is sold. Maybe they won't know how rare it is.

Starting in the mid-1980's, Irma began a long-lasting relationship with Rounder Records, which was actively recording classic New Orleans artists then and re-starting numerous careers that way, bless 'em (especially producer Scott Billington). None of her work with Rounder is bad. But I'll suggest some titles for starters that also may be available at amazon.com or the Louisiana Music Factory:

If You Want It Come and Get It - a single CD retrospective compilation of her Rounder work (it must have been hard to choose) that gives a taste from most of her albums.

The Way I Feel - This is probably my favorite Rounder album by Irma, followed closely by the one that came right before it, The New Rules.

Live: Simply The Best - Recorded in San Francisco at Slim's, this is not as good as it should have been. She takes requests; and the band can't quite pull some of them off. The newer cover songs don't do much for me. But Irma's singing saves the day.

I'll be posting some more Irma audio at HOTG soon. So check back.