The first time I heard Allen Toussaint, I didnt know I was hearing Allen Toussaint.
The tune was the eminently funky New Orleans-informed piano rocker A Certain Girl, and the version I was hearing was culled from sardonic singer/songwriter Warren Zevons Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School album. I had the habit of perusing liner notes as if they were freshly discovered scrolls from the Dead Sea, and so I needed to know who this A. Toussaint credited in parentheses following A Certain Girl was.
The search led me to New Orleans, figuratively speaking, and to a world of musical wonder Im still unfolding decades later.
Toussaint, who suffered a heart attack and died Tuesday after performing a Monday evening concert at the Lara Theatre in Madrid, was emblematic of the marriage of soul, R&B, jazz and funk that is associated with post-1950s New Orleans music.
He was a revered songwriter, pianist, singer, collaborator and record producer, whose songs were covered by everyone from Zevon and the Rolling Stones to Jerry Garcia, Al Hirt and Glen Campbell, and whose collaborators included Elvis Costello, the Band, Labelle, and Paul McCartney, whose Venus & Mars album was recorded at Toussaints Sea-Saint Studios in New Orleans.
His influence, often uncredited, has been pervasive throughout hip-hops evolution, a point Roots drummer Questlove underscored in an Instagram post following Toussaints death. (Quests post read, in part: Man this hit home. Of all the cats that I never had a 1 on 1 convo w/ to pick their brain about their music experiences: this is numero uno. I dont want yall thinkin this is just some old legend that passed away naw. This dude wrote some of your favorite music & you just didnt know it. He effected SO many genres. Thats how you know how potent and effective your art is: when you quietly change the scene w/o proper acknowledgement. If someone had the right to have KWest brag swag it was this man.)
Writing on his The Audacity of Despair blog on Tuesday, filmmaker David Simon, who consulted with Toussaint during the creation of the hit HBO series Treme, remembered him as a gentle, giving soul and one of the finest composers who ever labored in the idiom of American music.
Among other things, Treme was our attempt to depict New Orleans music community as organically as we might in a make-believe television version and to give voice to some of the extraordinary talent and craft of that citys music, Simon wrote. There could be no attempt at such without Mr. Toussaint engaged.
Following the devastation wrought on New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, Toussaint teamed with Elvis Costello for the creation of the stirring song-cycle The River in Reverse, an album dedicated to the city and its inhabitants. The album won the duo a Best Pop Vocal Grammy in 2006, which seemed like an act of damning by faint praise the collections 15 songs, all written by Toussaint, either alone or in collaboration with Costello, offered a heady, heartfelt and ambitious blend of R&B, jazz and soul, and quite handily transcended the pop pigeonhole.
The River in Reverse represented the sound of New Orleans heartbeat, during a time when neglect was threatening to quiet that heartbeat for good. Along with his solo albums Southern Nights (1975) and Life, Love & Faith (1972), as well as his production and arranging work with the Band, the Meter, and McCartney, River serves as a fitting testament to Toussaints eminently soulful influence on the past 50 years of American music.
Toussaint was a (h)umble cat whose work spoke louder than he did, Questloves Instagram post concluded. Thats what we all need to learn from.
email: jmiers@buffnews.com
Source: http://buffalo.com/2015/11/10/featured/celebrating-allen-toussaint/
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