Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
Irma Thomas, the great R&B singer of “Time Is On My Side” and “Done Got Over,” didn’t intend to infuse this CD with the ghosts of Hurricane Katrina. But they showed up anyhow. Though the opening version of the late Arthur Alexander’s “In the Middle of It All” begins as a breakup song, the flood makes its way inside: “My house is a lonely house/ but it once was a happy house/ and the two of us we were so happy as I recall/ but now the rain falls around it/ and loneliness surrounds it.” It’s one of many moments that will give you chills, from the blues standard “Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor” to Stevie Wonder’s hopeful finale “Shelter in the Rain.” And Thomas doesn’t even mention that Katrina destroyed her New Orleans home.
