It never has been easy being Irma Thomas. Wanting nothing more than a national hit, in the late ’60s, the big-voiced, strong-willed singer followed a string of regional New Orleans successes to the West Coast, where a series of major-label deals eventually went nowhere and left her, by the early ’70s, clerking days at the Oakland, California, Montgomery Ward and gigging around the Bay Area on weekends. It wasn’t long before she returned home to New Orleans, recording for local and regional labels again. Fortunately, her career was pulled from the brink of obscurity in the mid-’70s, when the recently-organized New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival began to take off and provide something of a showcase for local performers.
By the mid-’80s, she began an association with Boston’s Rounder Records that produced an extended series of releases blessed with professionally crafted settings tailored precisely to Irma’s natural strengths—a deep feeling for blues- and church-derived soul, combined with the ability to inhabit a song so completely that she can turn it immediately intimate—providing her with a national and international following. But still, the old ghosts continued to hang around. After a pair of refreshingly retro and surprisingly heartfelt debut albums on Rounder (The New Rules and The Way I Feel), Irma decided it was time to attempt a live recording of old hits, new covers and New Orleans classics.
She wisely chose Slim’s in San Francisco, the roots-oriented club (owned by rock star Boz Scaggs), where two rousing nights of tightly-rehearsed music resulted in an animated and stirring release, Live: Simply the Best!, an effort strong enough to earn a ’92 Grammy nomination. Surely now, she was now on her way to greater recognition.
But it wasn’t to be. All the Grammy nomination got her was a drop-off in live bookings—based on the misguided notion of promoters that she’d be raising her asking price—which she depended on for a living. Since then, in her characteristic manner, Irma Thomas has simply dug her heels in deeper. True Believer, her follow-up release on Rounder, turned out to be a deeply felt masterpiece of great R&B tunes with a decidedly gospel tinge, and her next project, the all-gospel Walk Around Heaven: New Orleans Gospel Soul, quickly became not only a truly classic expression of the Southern spiritual tradition but a musical accomplishment as well, highly regarded for its close attention to detail and craft.
The problem for Irma now seems not so much how to produce a true national “hit,” but how to find songs fit for a mature practitioner of “roots-based” R&B that satisfy the demands of total conviction and artistic challenge. This alone seems a great deal to ask of a music so often and increasingly—especially in the popular commercial mind—associated with youth, the requirements of a romantic education and other passing concerns of newly independent young adults. But the problem is made doubly difficult by the artistic gifts bestowed on Irma Thomas—singing from the soul for her has always meant finding a way to connect to her own experience. Taken in that context, I’m not sure there has ever been an album quite like My Heart’s in Memphis. To begin with, producer Scott Billington decided not only to bring in Dan Penn as chief songwriter, Billington also decided to let Dan Penn oversee the lion’s share of the production and to record in Memphis, with the best of Memphis’ splendid studio musicians.
To understand the wisdom of that decision, the interested listener need only refer to a pair of essential CDs—Penn’s own Do Right Man (self-produced in ’94 for Sire Records), with some of his biggest and best hits: “Dark End of the Street,” “It Tears Me Up,” “You Left the Water Running,” “Do Right Woman,” “Zero Willpower” and “I’m Your Puppet,” along with the Box Tops’ The Letter/Neon Rainbow, produced by Penn in ’67 and gorgeously reissued earlier this year by Sundazed Records. The Letter/Neon Rainbow remains a landmark in stylish Southern R&B, as much for launching the career of New Orleans resident and underground legend Alex Chilton as for it ability to retain an evocative sense of sweetness, fire and remarkable diversity more than three decades after its original release, while Do Right Man delivers as concentrated a serving of T-shirt-staining, real Southern deep soul, Memphis-style, as anything ever committed to recording tape.
With Dan Penn’s considerable intercession, My Heart’s in Memphis on first listening leaves the clear impression of something majestic, of work that’s been carefully and masterfully crafted. And that feeling of majesty and accomplishment establishes plenty of moments where it’s easy to believe the Soul Queen of New Orleans may be in the best voice she’s ever been, that she may be singing with more conviction, with more more wisdom, more chops, than anyone in the business today, at least as far as this kind of music goes. And even that she could be singing this kind of music with more power and grace than anyone ever has. From that perspective it’s hard not to believe that Irma Thomas may well be the most aggregiously overlooked artist not only of her generation, but maybe the most aggregiously overlooked artist in the country today.
And repeated listening confirm that first impression, revealing the touch of just such an artist all over My Heart’s in Memphis—from the deep shouts that complement the nearly ubiquitous organs fills, borrowed from so many backroads Southern churches, to the narrative drive of the almost-constant, chicken-scratch guitar that so easily suggest the beats of New Orleans second-line parades, to the gorgeous freedom allowed by a preponderance of the kind of ballad tempos that are Irma’s signature dish—her musical red-beans-and-rice—giving her the opportunity to really stretch out, lean into the backbeat and just be herself. Listen, for example to the languid heat percolating just below the surface of the album’s title tune, which opens the CD, or “I’m Your Puppet”—familiar to many as a Top Ten hit for James & Bobby Purify—or “Zero Willpower,” one of two great Dan Penn classics the songwriter/producer originally cut with Irma back in ’76.
Or check out the soaring organ fills—frequently supplied by Penn’s closest songwriting partner, Spooner Oldham—on “Woman Left Lonely,” for instance, the other Penn classic remade from ‘76, setting the stage for the Irma’s leaning into the opening notes of a chorus with the kind of vocal strength that seems beyond human. (For another example of the same kind of spine-chilling experience, listen to Irma trade chorus phrases with Tracy Nelson, back and forth, back and forth, on the closing track to Sing It!, “You Don’t Know Nothin’ (About Love).” ) Of particular interest on My Heart’s in Memphis is the frequent reliance on the beautifully restrained chicken-scratch guitar, a Memphis specialty, supplied here by Michael Toles (whose resume includes brilliant wah-wah guitar backing to Isaac Haye’s take on the movie theme from Shaft!). Listen to the way it skip-steps along behind “Keep It Simple,” an Irma Thomas-style anthem that wouldn’t be out of place sung, umbrella in hand, at the head of second-line parade through any of New Orleans’ culturally rich but economically poor neighborhoods.
When all is said and done, the truth is it’s hard to describe exactly what kind of music this is, hard to imagine what the audience for it is, and equally hard to defend it against charges that My Heart’s in Memphis may less than absolutely perfect. It’s hard, even, to know what to compare this music to. And in that regard, you could say that Irma Thomas remains absolutely true to the path she chose early in life, exploring exactly what her feelings—her heart and her soul—tell her she should be exploring. While it may be true that it never has been easy being Irma Thomas, it’s also true, as New Orleans’ own Soul Queen frequently insists, it has almost always been a good thing—you might even call it a blessing—to be Irma Thomas. For long-time fans, My Heart’s in Memphis should prove a highly valued item in our cherished music collections; for those less familiar with her music, My Heart’s in Memphis offers the chance to experience one of America’s great artists working at the height of her powers.
