Sweet Soul Queen of New Orleans

Product Description:

Personnel includes: Irma Thomas (vocals); Roy Montrell (guitar); Red Tyler, Nat Perrilliat (tenor saxophone); Allen Toussaint (piano); Chuck Badie (bass); John Boudreaux (drums).

Producers include: Allen Toussaint, Eddie Ray, Jerry Ragavoy, James Brown.

Compilation producer: David "Daddy Cool" Booth.

Includes liner notes by John Morthland.

Tracks 1-5, 15, 20-22 are monaural. Tracks 6-14, 16-19, 23 are in stereo.

The title of SWEET SOUL QUEEN OF NEW ORLEANS pretty much says it all. Irma Thomas was the first lady of R&B in the Crescent City throughout the 1960s. With a voice that rang out clear and strong and was full of feeling, she cranked out a long stream of soul classics for the Minit and Imperial labels during that decade, tunes that became benchmarks for a generation of rockers as well as R&B artists. It's surely her majestic delivery of "Time Is On My Side," for instance, that moved the Rolling Stones to record the song.

Backed by Allen Toussaint and a host of other top-flight New Orleans session men, Thomas spins out accounts of romantic triumph and travail with equal aplomb. From the yearning, devotional ballad "Ruler of My Heart," with its plaintive cry for love, to the triumph over heartbreak detailed in "I Done Got Over It," Thomas brings a commitment to her material that is as uncompromising as it is entrancing, and it's all captured on this definitive collection.