Second Concert of the Thursday Harvest the Music Series at Lafayette Square
Last night, several thousand of Miss Irma Thomas's most devoted fans gathered in Lafayette Square for the second of 7 Thursday night concerts in September and October. The occasion is part of the on-going celebration this year of Irma's (unbelievable) 50 years as a professional singer. Despite the sultry heat and oppressive humidity and the threat of rain (when, oh when, will the weather break?? when will it be fall??), folks were glad to come out and show Irma some love.
I was there with 2 of my sisters, L and D, and L's husband. (Big Man had to miss due to a meeting and getting to Bourbon Street on time). We had a good spot, a little to the left of the stage, not too far back. Of course, we ran into lots of people we know -- long-time old friends, a few people we went to grade school with, members of the crowd of friends around my sister L. I saw the local filmmaker who made the well-received, balanced documentary about the closing of local Catholic churches, and introduced him to my sisters. Anåis St. John went past us too quickly for me to grab her, her baby daughter Elle perched on her hip, heading for as close to the stage and her idol as she could get.
A new restaurant owner, dressed in a chef's outfit, was going through the crowd, handing out menus to promote his venture, and as he got close to us I realized that this was the man Big Man has been telling me about, the new owner of the new restaurant Tiramisu on Carondelet (and first runner-up in the Lou Costello look-alike contest). I introduced myself as the Trumpet Man's wife and he greeted me warmly. He said he was trying to work out a way for Big Man to come play at his place. L and D both took his sample menus and promised to check the place out.
The opening act was the talented Shamarr Allen and the Underdawgs, a new band for him, and it turns out, a different style of music from his band Frenchmen Street. The Underdawgs is Shamarr's foray into hip-hop, and while the music seemed popular with the younger members of the crowd, it is not really my thing. In a spirit of support and fair play, however, I gave them a big hand at the end of their set.
During the break between bands, L and D and I cruised the crafts/arts booths and either admired or critiqued the wares, depending on our collective inclination. We were tickled by the silk foulard ties in tiny NOLA-inspired prints, and were transported back to kitchen experiments of our childhood with the items made of melted Carnival beads. We deplored the Duke Ellington vinyl album made into a bowl. We fingered fleur de lis jewelry and exclaimed over ceramic replications of long-lost NOLA landmarks.
But we hurried back to our spot so as not to miss the start of Irma's set. Funny thing: it seemed as though both the emcee on the stage and the sound tech in the booth were unprepared for how an Irma Thomas set gets rolling. Following an old R&B convention as ritualized and unchangeable as the stylings of Kabuki, the headliner NEVER comes to the stage right off the bat. Instead, the band plays several tunes, showing off their own prowess and drawing out the suspense in the crowd for the main act, and then a band member enthusiastically introduces the Big Name.
Irma Thomas gigs, whether at Jazz Fest or her own club, have followed this set-in-stone pattern for as long as I have ever seen her in person (which is more like 40 years, and not the entire 50). But apparently it was something of a surprise to the folks in charge at Lafayette Square last night. The emcee screamed out that we should welcome to the stage "The Soul Queen of New Or-leeens!!" just as if he expected Miss Thomas to bound right up onto the stage, and as her faithful band, the Professionals, hit the first tune and began to sing, it was clear that the horn line's vocal mikes were not even on.
The Professionals did 3 tunes, ending with a more than respectable cover of Stevie Wonder's "Superstition," and then came the traditional intro, going through some of the awards and recognition Irma has received over the years, ending of course with her sobriquet, "Soul Queen of New Orleans!" The unmistakable voice, warm and rich and throaty and just a little smoky, came out of seeming nowhere in the opening lines of the first song. A few in the crowd wondered, "Where is she at?" but those of us knowledgeable with the show-biz conventions of R&B knew that Irma, using a cordless mike, had begun singing off-stage, and was being slowly and gently escorted up the stage steps by Emile, her husband and partner. As she came into view, the crowd greeted her with screams and waves and clapping. She looked great, and sounded better.
Irma led off with several songs from her latest album, the anniversary collection entitled -- naturally -- 50th Anniversary Celebration, and one or two from her Grammy-winning post-Katrina album "After the Rain." (Anyone who can hear Irma sing "Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor" from that album without crying is no New Orleanian.) It's amazing how wonderful her voice still is, and her styling is so wise and yet so cool.
At the end of the set, in traditional fashion, Irma ran through the hits that had made us all love her in the 1950s and the 1960s, and thousands of us New Orleanians sang along with her and swayed with our sweeties to these songs that meant so much to us. "Breakway," "Ruler of My Heart," "It's Raining," of course, "You Can Have My Husband (But Please Don't Mess With My Man"). "Hip-Shaking Mama" brought down the house, as it always does -- kind of wildly weird and wonderful to see seemingly respectable folks in their sixties, fifties and forties chanting along with such lines as, "My man has got something/he keeps it hid/But I've got something/I can find it with."
And you know she had to do her traditional medley of Mardi Gras Indian tunes, encouraging us to find something to wave in order to secondline. We all got our "backfields in motion" as she always says, waving handkerchiefs, paper napkins, scarves, picnic blankets, hats, whatever we had, in the air, grinning foolishly at each other, not caring how we might look.
What with Irma's singing and the Professionals playing and all that waving and dancing in the heat and the wet, we were all soaked and near exhausted as the set ended. We screamed and hollered and waved whatever we had been waving, til Irma returned to the stage. In an emotional voice, she thanked us for our 50 years of being her faithful fans, and told us we were "simply the best" and then of course she sang that to us as her finale.
But we all knew that it was Irma who was Simply the Best, Better Than All The Rest, Better Than Anyone.
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