USA TODAY International Edition
The glorious music of Allen Toussaint
It could be the closest I’ve ever come to greatness.
I was at an outdoor daytime concert at the Old U. S. Mint in New Orleans. Just before the music began, a slim, elegant figure emerged. He leaned against a wall near where I was standing and proceeded to listen to the music by a band that enjoyed playing songs of great Louisiana swamp rocker Bobby Charles. It was Allen Toussaint. Toussaint, who died Monday at 77, was a seminal force in New Orleans rhythm and blues. Yet there he was, by himself, dapper as always in a suit despite the New Orleans heat, mingling with the masses.
Toussaint, a disciple of New Orleans piano legend Professor Longhair, was a protean musician, a singer, a splendid piano player in a city that has produced so many of them, and, most important, a prolific songwriter and producer. He wrote so many of the songs that define the extremely fertile era of ’ 50s and ’ 60s New Orleans R& B — think Mother- in- Law and Lipstick Traces and Working in the Coal Mine and I Like It Like That. He collaborated with Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney and Patti LaBelle. He arranged horns for The Band. His songs were covered by the Rolling Stones ( Fortune Teller) and Glen Campbell ( Southern Nights). He was named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and he received a National Humanities Medal from President Obama. He is a national treasure. Yet for all his achievements, for all that prodigious talent, Allen Toussaint never became a household name — except in the right households. And, in New Orleans, where he was royalty.
A few years after I first encountered the great one at the Old U. S. Mint, I experienced what I like to think of as my Summer of Allen Toussaint.
After New Orleans was savaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Toussaint moved to New York and teamed up with Elvis Costello on a post- Katrina CD called The River in Reverse. The two went on the road, and the album and the tour pushed Toussaint into the limelight, at least a little. Toussaint dryly referred to Katrina as his booking agent.
It was my privilege to see the two perform in Washington, D. C., and Aspen in 2006. But the real highlight of the summer was seeing Toussaint at a private concert in Snowmass, just outside Aspen. I could get as close as I wanted and watch his hands as he made his piano magic. Just a magical night. When it comes to Toussaint favorites, I’m all over the lot.
But it’s the ’ 50s and ’ 60s New Orleans R& B that puts me over the top. When it comes to sheer exuberance, it is in a class by it- self. Of course, that sublime category is no Allen Toussaint monopoly. Listen to Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns sing High Blood Pressure and you’ll know what I mean.
But Toussaint is responsible for so many classics. As my friend the journalist Mark Lisheron says, “I don’t think it’s overstatement to say Toussaint singlehandedly created what most Americans know as New Orleans rhythm and blues.”
As I write this, I’m listening, for perhaps the 7,000th time, to Mother- in- Law. It’s got all the elements: New Orleans favorite Ernie K- Doe (“Burn, K- Doe, Burn!”) singing lead; the booming bass of Benny Spellman, who recorded Toussaint standards Lipstick Traces and Fortune Teller; those rollicking New Orleans horns, which do nothing but make the world a better place.
But best of all, the Allen Toussaint piano solo, as life- affirming an interlude as I’ve ever heard.
Thank you, Allen Toussaint, thank you for everything.