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Before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the great R&B singer Irma Thomas hadn’t worked a job in 30 days. But the week the levees broke last September, Thomas was out of town, performing in Austin, Texas. “The one job I had took me out of the city – there’s an omen there somewhere,” she says. “I feel I was blessed and kept here for a reason.”
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Many New Orleans musicians have had to move much farther away – some, sadly, forever. The great blues, country and jazz bandleader Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown died at age 81 shortly after he relocated from his New Orleans home to Orange, Texas. Trumpeter Irvin Mayfield lost his father, Irvin Mayfield Sr., and ex-Cowsills singer Barry Cowsill died almost immediately after Katrina. Other musicians have scattered throughout the country, some touring because they have no home to return to, others rebuilding as far away as New York City and Boulder, Colo.
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