“Baby Driver,” the new pedal-to-the-metal plus needle-to-the-vinyl action movie that is a love letter to the wonders of fast cars and pop music, takes its title from a winsome 1969 recording by Simon and Garfunkel.

But the film’s true theme song might be a Stax classic by the Queen of Memphis Soul, Carla Thomas.

Written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter, Thomas’ 1966 hit “B-A-B-Y” — “Baby, oooh baby, I love to call you baby” — is the movie’s earworm. The song is incorporated not only into the soundtrack but into the dialogue, whenever a skeptic seems puzzled to learn the name of the music-obsessed getaway-car driver who is the film’s hero. “Your name’s Baby?” a waitress (Lily James) asks the young man (Ansel Elgort). “B-A-B-Y, Baby?”

Nobody is more pleased by this development than Thomas, who is not just one of Stax’s foundational artists — “Cause I Love You,” her 1960 teenage duet with her father, Rufus Thomas, put the new studio at 926 E. McLemore on the R&B map — but a diehard movie devotee who dates her filmgoing habit to the 1940s, when she used to watch Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan at the New Daisy Theatre on Beale Street.

Thomas, 74, watched "Baby Driver" for the first time Wednesday night at the Malco Studio on the Square. "That was exciting," she said. "What I like most was they showed my picture and my album, so people would know who it really was."

With a voice that retains much of the shy-yet-sly girlishness that informed such early Stax hits as "Gee Whiz," Thomas added: "I was kind of cute then." She was referring to the 1966 album, "Carla," which the "Baby Driver" hero finds in a record store and brings back to his home turntable. The cover presents three views of Thomas as a sophisticated soul chanteuse, in a slinky and glittery gold dress.

I first became aware of Thomas' extreme movie fandom in 2015, when I attended an opening night screening of "Fifty Shades of Grey" and was surprised to find the woman responsible for so many wonderful recordings sitting to my immediate right.

I have to admit being a solo male at a "Fifty Shades of Grey" screening was a somewhat uncomfortable experience, especially being a solo male taking notes. (Hey, I was reviewing the movie for The Commercial Appeal, y'all.) It also didn't seem right to transcribe such dialog quotes as "What are butt plugs?" while sitting near the woman who was still a student at Hamilton High when she penned the innocent words: "Gee whiz, look at his eyes / Gee whiz, how they hypnotize..."

Thomas, I learned, has been a regular at the Studio on the Square since 2003, when the then three-year-old theater hosted the Memphis premiere of the soul music documentary "Only the Strong Survive," an event attended by producer Roger Friedman and the famous husband-and-wife filmmaking team of D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

Already an avid movie buff, Thomas made the Studio a sort of home away from home (which is perhaps not as difficult as it sounds, since she mostly lives in hotels, as a self-described "tourist" of her hometown). She sometimes takes in more than one movie a day, and she greets employees by name. ("Mike's a sweetie," she said Wednesday, when she saw manager Mike Carrigan at the ticket counter.)

Adding to what she calls "my little tourist self" vibe, Thomas doesn't drive. Instead, she typically travels around town via taxi cab. (And don't bother telling her she ought to download an Uber app: She doesn't own a cell phone.) As a result, she sometimes arrives at the theater toting bags of possessions or recent purchases, which theater workers stow behind the counter.

"She always says, 'Why don't they put my music in the movies?' " said concession stand worker Vicki Webber, 57, a Studio employee for eight years. When "Baby Driver" opened June 28, "I wanted to tell her, 'They finally did.' "

Wednesday night, I joined Thomas and her friend Nicki Newburger, a local filmmaker, at "Baby Driver," the sixth feature from writer-director Edgar Wright and a box-office overachiever that earned close to $40 million in its first week.

Thomas, arriving in a taxi, was dressed distinctively and expressively. A style original in search of the appreciative audience that transformed Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale and Iris Apfel from iconoclasts into icons, Thomas wore large hoop earrings festooned with baubles like keys on a keychain; six rings (including a "rainbow moonstone"); four necklaces; eleven bracelets, each with its own personal story; Adidas sneakers with metallic silver toes; a leopard-print sleeveless dress over a bright blue T-shirt; a scarf; and an improvised turban. "I'm a very visual type," she said. "I think most artists are."

Even before the movie started, Thomas revealed herself to be a theater owner's dream. "You know, I'm going to have to see it again," she said. "I always have to see 'em more than once. I get too excited the first time. The second time, I watch everything — the clothes, the cars.”

The auditorium was fairly full, although nobody sat directly behind our front-row seats, which was probably just as well: Thomas is an enthusiastic and vocal fan who brings a positive attitude to the moviegoing experience, including the trailers. "I love that guy right there — Ryan," she said, when Ryan Gosling appeared in the preview for "Blade Runner 2049." "He reminds me of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly."

During the trailer for the science-gone-wrong thriller "Flatliners," Ellen Page tells a colleague: "I want you to stop my heart." "Oh my God," Thomas exclaimed. "This is going to be good."

Watching a movie with Carla Thomas has benefits for a fan of soul music, especially if that movie, like "Baby Driver," is filled with vintage rock, pop and rhythm-and-blues music.

Thomas — who has plenty of pertinent points to make about "gender bashing" in show business, and about the unfair treatment of women in the "man's town" of Memphis — rarely performs (although she occasionally makes an impromptu guest appearance, as when she recently joined the band Memphis Soul Remedy at Lafayette's Music Room for a rendition of Sam Cooke's "Bring It on Home to Me"). During "Baby Driver," however, she offered soft vocal accompaniment to many of the classic cuts on the soundtrack, crooning along with Bob & Earl's "Harlem Shuffle," Lionel Richie's "Easy" and "When Something Is Wrong with My Baby" by her Stax labelmates, Sam and Dave.

Occasionally, she offered commentary. When "Every Little Bit Hurts" was heard, Thomas said that Brenda Holloway was "one of my favorite Motown singers, she just never got as big as Martha Reeves or Diana."

"Baby Driver" introduces Thomas' "B-A-B-Y" during a scene in a diner, where the hero, Baby, overhears a passing waitress interpreting the song. In her theater seat, Thomas offered encouragement: "Go ahead, girl!"

After he buys the album, Baby — who seems to spend few waking moments without his earbuds and an iPod — lip-syncs and dances to the song in his apartment. "It was like a play," said Thomas, referring to the way the song was introduced by one character and then carried into a new location by another.

"I wonder do I get any royalties from that?" she mused aloud, explaining that performance royalties are less reliable than the residuals paid out to songwriters and music publishers. "You just have to pray to God and say, 'Lord, let somebody be kind.' "

From 1960 to 1969, Thomas placed 17 Top 40 singles on the R&B or pop charts, a time span that overlapped her high school years and her time at Tennessee State University and Howard University in Washington. She lived in D.C. for almost a decade, and then spent the subsequent decade in Los Angeles, "right smack dab in Hollywood," before returning to Memphis.

"I was always an artistic-type child," said Thomas, adding that her late parents, Rufus and Lurene, encouraged the artistic inclinations she shared with her younger sister, Vaneese Thomas, also a singer, and her older brother, Marvell Thomas (who died Jan. 23 at 75).

As a kid, Thomas said, she used to stand in front of the mirror and sing the Ivory Joe Hunter hit, "Empty Arms." But even as she pursued music, she retained an interest in the movies. She took film classes in Los Angeles, was a member of the Memphis film commission board and still imagines scenarios for short films inspired by her experiences and imagination. One idea, she said, would be for "Martin, Elvis and Michael" (King, Presley and Jackson) to return from the dead and march arm-in-arm down Beale Street, explaining the thoughts and emotions that biographers have failed to understand.

She said she appreciates Edgar Wright's appreciation for her music. "What amazes me always, when I hear music in a film, I think, 'What was the director thinking in his head?' He has to have a vision for the music in his head. You cannot hardly have a movie without it."