Irma Thomas - Slim's, San Francisco, CA, 6-17-1995

Irma Thomas has had a long career singing soul music, and she's still going as I write this in late 2023. However, she's not considered a big name like, say Aretha Franklin or Etta James, so there are very few good bootleg concerts by her. But I recently came across this one. I was impressed with both the sound quality and the performance, so I'm posting it.

Here's the Wikipedia page about her, if you want to know more:

Irma Thomas - Wikipedia

One thing that sets her apart from most soul singers in that she was born near New Orleans, and lived most of her life there, so many of her songs are influenced by the New Orleans sound. She's even called "The Soul Queen of New Orleans." She had a few hits in the early 1960s, but none since then, and she even retired from singing altogether for most of the 1980s, running a club instead. But she resumed her career in the early 1990s, and while her sales weren't great, she was steadily critically acclaimed. She won a Grammy Award in 2007.

She put out a live album in 1991, called "Live! Simply the Best." I wasn't going to post this for fear that it was too similar to that album. But I checked the set lists, and most of the songs are different, with only her classic hits like "Time Is on My Side," "It's Raining," and "Wish Someone Would Care" being the same. So if you have that, I think you'll still want this.

The lead vocals were rather low in the mix, so I used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost them relative to the instruments for all the songs.

This album is an hour and five minutes long.

01 Intro - Don't Mess with My Man (Irma Thomas)
02 Cry On (Irma Thomas)
03 I Did My Part (Irma Thomas)
04 Ruler of My Heart (Irma Thomas)
05 Hittin' On Nothin' (Irma Thomas)
06 It's Raining (Irma Thomas)
07 I Done Got Over It (Irma Thomas)
08 Iko Iko - Hey Pocky Way - I Done Got Over It [Reprise] (Irma Thomas)
09 Time Is on My Side (Irma Thomas)
10 talk (Irma Thomas)
11 Breakaway (Irma Thomas)
12 Wish Someone Would Care (Irma Thomas)
13 Baby, I Love You (Irma Thomas)
14 I Just Had to Hear Your Voice (Irma Thomas)
15 Get Here (Irma Thomas)
16 talk (Irma Thomas)
17 We're Gonna Make It (Irma Thomas)
18 Simply the Best (Irma Thomas)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16071778/IrmaThms_1995_SlimsSnFrncscoCA__6-17-1995_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any good photos of Thomas from 1995. The one I used is from a festival in Nice, France, in 1994.