Irma Thomas: Soul Queen of New Orleans

by Johnette Downing, Scott Billington, Irma Thomas (Primary Contributor)

Irma Thomas is a beloved New Orleans icon with a career that now spans sixty years. Her self-penned “Wish Someone Would Care” was a national hit in 1964, though she did not win her first Grammy until 2007 for her post-Hurricane Katrina album, After the Rain. A contemporary of artists like Aretha Franklin and Etta James, she followed a different path to fame and acclaim.

The course of Irma Thomas’s music career at first seems improbable. Born Irma Lee in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, her early years were spent shuttling between New Orleans and rural Greensburg. She showed early promise as an entertainer and singer, but her education was cut short when she became pregnant at the age of fourteen. By the time she was twenty, she had four children. She began recording while in her late teens, scoring a hit with the risqué “Don’t Mess with My Man,” and subsequently working with producer/songwriter Allen Toussaint. Her biggest hits were recorded in Los Angeles, where she briefly moved in the early 1970s. Upon returning to New Orleans, she was caught in the wave of the discovery of New Orleans rhythm and blues by the world at large, and became a fixture at the annual Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Scott Billington, who was Thomas’s producer for over twenty years including when she won her Grammy, and Johnette Downing combine diligent research with an insider’s connection to Thomas’s story. The authors illuminate both the person and the broader world of New Orleans music as it evolved along with this treasured music legend.

294 pages, Paperback

Expected publication November 3, 2026

About the author

Recipient of the Louisiana Writer Award and the NOTCF's Literary Arts and Humanities Award, New Orleans culture bearer Johnette Downing is a musician, author, illustrator and poet dedicated to sharing her rich Louisiana musical and literary heritage with children across the globe. Called the "Bard of the Bayou," Johnette has performed on five continents and is the author of thirteen albums and thirty-two books including two biographies for grown-ups.