Irma Thomas recorded Time Is on My Side in 1964 as a B-side, then watched the Rolling Stones turn it into their first American top ten hit. Sixty years later, at the May 2024 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, she finally sang it as a duet with Mick Jagger. This episode follows the Soul Queen of New Orleans from a Baptist choir in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, through an audition at Specialty Records at 13, two marriages and four children by 19, and a waitress job that led to Tommy Ridgley, Ron Records and the 1959 R&B hit Don't Mess with My Man.

We examine her golden era with Allen Toussaint at Minit Records, songs like It's Raining and Ruler of My Heart, which Otis Redding reworked as Pain in My Heart, and her biggest national hit Wish Someone Would Care on Imperial. The episode explains why a singer on the level of Aretha Franklin or  ...