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PROFILE

Irma Thomas — photo by Cheryl Gerber

La” Morgan, Benny Spellman, Lee Dorsey, Johnny Adams, Frankie Ford, Allen Toussaint, Charles Neville, all now gone; Huey “Piano” Smith, no longer performing; Dr. John, Frogman Henry, Art Neville and Robert “Barefootin’” Parker, rarely so. This litany leaves Irma Thomas on an exalted plateau of torch- bearers with Aaron Neville and Deacon John. She recently recorded a grand version of “Even Now” with Walter “Wolfman”Washington (a spring chicken at 74) on his April release, My Future Is My Past. The song, available on YouTube,was cowritten by the late David Egan, the composer of many other Irma Thomas favorites.The CD was produced by Ben Ellman of Galactic. Thomas was 19 when she recorded the Dorothy LaBostrie composition, “You Can Have My Husband (But Please Don’t Mess With My Man”), a crowd-pleaser in the years to come. But it was the sessions with Toussaint, who composed at the piano as she sat poised to sing, that gave Thomas a rare education as a vocalist. Of her many honors — among them, the Best Contemporary Blues AlbumGrammy,aW.C.Handy Award,an OffBea t Magazine Award, a Big Easy Award, induction into the Blues Hall of Fame — the one by Delgado College, where she earned an associate’s degree in 2001, may be the most fitting. In 2008, Delgado named its W.I.S.E. Center (Women in Search of Excellence) for Irma Thomas. She showed the same resilience in the pursuit of education as she did in her musical career, earning an associate’s degree at 61. She volunteers at the W.I.S.E. Center as a motivational speaker for students seeking the road to a better life, as she found in music.

Church, branching out to school talent shows and eventually catch- ing the eye of fabled rhythm-and-blues bandleader Tommy Ridgley, who gave her a venue with his band, the Untouchables, when she was 17. Adolescence was a rocky time as she struggled for a career break. She had her first child at 14.By age 17 she had three kids and had divorced her second husband, whose surname she kept for the stage. After a stint in California where she worked for a while in a department store, Irma Thomas came home to reignite her career in the 1970s, drawing on the lyrics that came out of sessions several years earlier with Allen Toussaint, compositions that have had staying power in her repertoire, songs like “TwoWinters Long,”“It’s Raining” and the 1963 chart-buster “Wish Someone Would Care.” Her torch-song version of another song, “Time Is on My Side,” inspired a cover version by Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones. As she found her career trajectory, and domestic equilibrium with Emile Jackson,Thomas’radiant persona belied the years; she got older, singing songs that made the fans feel — and her seem — younger. When she sang the ’60s proms and CYO dances at St. Henry’s and other parish gyms, Irma Thomas was not too much older than the starry-eyed teenagers waltzing to the chemistry-stirring tones of her mellow, bluesy voice. She came of age part of an illustrious generation — Ridgley, Ernie K-Doe, Oliver “Who Shot the La

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