Irma Thomas: Last News

The Rolling Stones have performed at New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and broke out the first live performance of ‘Time Is On My Side’ in 25 years. Check out footage of the set below.The rock veterans took to the stage at the iconic festival last night (May 2), for one of their first festival appearances since sharing their critically acclaimed album ‘Hackney Diamonds’ last year.As well as breaking out a number of tracks from the LP, fan favourites and tour debuts on the night, the band also used the set to play a live rendition of their cover of ‘Time Is On My Side’ in over two decades.The moment saw them invite Irma Thomas to the stage, and took place exactly 50 years after they recorded the cover of the Jerry Ragovoy track.

Malice K features on The Cover this week (January 29) as we continue to renew our commitment to supporting emerging talent across the globe on a weekly basis. Every week, a rising artist will feature on The Cover, and the full interview with Malice K can be read here.To celebrate, the artist – born Alex Konschuh – has put together a playlist titled ‘Currently In Rotation’, featuring tracks from The Beatles, Elliott Smith, Irma Thomas, Roy Orbison and more.

The Rolling Stones, Foo Fighters and Neil Young and Crazy Horse are among a litany of huge names announced for this year’s New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.Also at the top of the bill are The Killers, Vampire Weekend, Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, Chris Stapleton, Hozier and Jon Batiste.The festival, which takes place over two weekends between April 25 and May 5 at the Fair Grounds Race Course in New Orleans, goes out of its way to celebrate the rich musical heritage of the city.Jazz Fest 2024 Music Lineup!GA Weekend Passes and VIP Packages on sale now!Full Music Lineup and Purchase tickets at https://t.co/dApNCrvPYZ. pic.twitter.com/Ba5Q8QDwNG— New Orleans JazzFest (@jazzfest) January 18, 2024Representing the city’s cultural legacy are names such as Irma Thomas, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, The Dixie Cups, Big Freedia, Trombone Shorty and Cyril Neville.Also set to feature at the festival are The Beach Boys, Earth, Wind & Fire, Bonnie Raitt, Queen Latifah, Greta Van Fleet and Heart.Tickets for both weekends of the festival and all VIP packages can be found here.In November, the Stones confirmed details of a huge US tour for 2024, opening with a show in Houston on April 28, and continuing for 15 more dates going into the summer, wrapping up in Santa Clara, California on July 17.

EXCLUSIVE: Dubai-based sales agent Cercamon Docs has come aboard to handle worldwide sales on Ben Chace’s Music Pictures: New Orleans, which is set to bow at the Tribeca Film Festival in June. The company will introduce the film to buyers during the Cannes Market.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticThe last time there were as many trombones in a movie as there are in “Take Me to the River: New Orleans,” Harold Hill was probably leading a parade. The ongoing vitalization of the Crescent City’s music culture really is like something out of a horn salesman’s fever dream, with younger generations readily taking up New Orleans’ traditional second-line culture in a way that can only make the aging elders of other regional music scenes green with envy.

Chris Willman Music WriterWhat were the odds that the Recording Academy would honor the woman that many consider the greatest living female songwriter, Joni Mitchell, and great living male songwriter, Paul Simon, within a week’s time of one another? And yet that’s what happened as last Friday’s pre-Grammys MusiCares tribute to Mitchell in Las Vegas was followed Wednesday in Los Angeles with “Homeward Bound: A Grammy Salute to the Songs of Paul Simon,” both with spectacularly curated lineups worthy of the feted. And although the Mitchell night is not set to be publicly aired, the good news for fans is that the Simon salute was filmed for a future CBS broadcast and is destined to be one of the highlights of the music-TV year.

Chris Willman Music WriterJohn Swenson, a veteran of rock journalism’s early years at Rolling Stone and Crawdaddy and later a chronicler of jazz, died Monday at 71 at his home in Brooklyn. He was reported to have been battling cancer for several years.Swenson started writing about music in 1967 and became one of the most familiar bylines in music journalism in the 1970s as he moved between not just Rolling Stone and Crawdaddy but Creem, Circus, Zoo World, Rock World, Beetle, Sounds and the Village Voice.His music writing later appeared in Spin, Musician, Saturday Review, UPI, Reuters, High Times and Stereophile, among other publications.

Chris Willman Music WriterAs the Grammys return as a big-scale live event this year, so is the tradition of filming a tribute to a superstar musician in the days following the awards show, with the 2022 honoree being Paul Simon, who’ll be saluted by an all-star cast at L.A.’s Pantages Theatre.“Homeward Bound: A Grammy Salute to the Songs of Paul Simon” will be filmed April 6, three days after the Grammys, with a CBS air date to be determined for later in the year. Ken Ehrlich is reprising the role he’s had in the past as the annual salute’s executive producer.Among the performers booked for the tribute are Brandi Carlile, Dave Matthews, Rhiannon Giddens, Brad Paisley, Angélique Kidjo, Little Big Town, Billy Porter, Trombone Shorty, Shaggy, Take 6 and Irma Thomas.

Chris Willman Music WriterThe New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is counting on 2022 being the charm, after the annual event was repeatedly postponed and finally canceled in 2020 and 2021. The festival popularly known as Jazzfest announced its return Thursday, with headliners including the Who, Stevie Nicks and Foo Fighters set to take the city’s stages across two weekends, April 29 through May 8.Among the dozens of other artists set for the fest, encompassing rock, R&B, roots music, country and, of course, the native sounds of Louisiana: Jimmy Buffett, Luke Combs, Willie Nelson, Lionel Richie, Erykah Badu, the Black Crowes, Lauren Daigle, the Avett Brothers, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Elvis Costello and the Imposters, Randy Newman, Norah Jones, Ludacris, Billy Strings, Trombone Shorty, Death Cab for Cutie, Melissa Etheridge, Buddy Guy, Irma Thomas, Arturo Sandoval, the Revivalists, Nelly, Tank and the Bangas and Terence Blanchard.