We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago….
You may not know his name but you certainly know his work. Allen Toussaint wore many hats in the music business. In the 1960″s, working out of New Orleans, he wrote and and arranged many hits for artists like Lee Dorsey (Working In A Coal Mine) and Ernie K-Doe (Mother In Law). He did “I Like It Like That” for Chris Kenner and wrote instrumentals like Java and Whipped Cream that were hits for trumpeters Al Hirt and Herb Alpert. He wrote “Fortune Teller” for Benny Spellman and cut by everyone from the Rolling Stones to Robert Plant & Alison Krauss on their Grammy winning LP “Raising Sand”. He wrote “Pain In My Heart” which was Otis Redding’s first hit. He wrote “A Certain Girl” which was cut by everyone from the Yardbirds to Warren Zevon. He also worked with the Meters and the Neville Brothers.
You certainly heard his work in the 70’s as he wrote and produced hundreds of recordings from artists like the Pointer Sisters, LaBelle and Dr. John. He arranged the horns for Cahoots and Rock of Ages for The Band and later did the same for The Last Waltz. He wrote “What Do You Want The Girl To Do” which Boz Scaggs put on “Silk Degrees” and was also cut by Bonnie Raitt, Vince Gill and Elvis Costello. He played on Venus & Mars from Wings. He also wrote classics like ‘Play Something Sweet” and “Southern Nights” that went to #1 for Glen Campbell.
But in 1971 Toussaint recorded a solo record of his own. the self-titled work was a mixture of vocal and instrumental tracks that featured his piano and some of the crack New Orleans musicians that he was working with at the time including Dr. John. Most were original including his own version of Working In A Coal Mine. He did take on a couple of interesting covers. He turned Harlan Howard’s “Chokin Kind” from a country song into some southern soul featuring those two old pro songbirds Merry Clayton and Venetta Fields on background vocals. He also did a funky version of Vince Guaraldi’s jazz classic ‘Cast Your Fate To The Wind”. Here are the two back to back….see what you think…
The instrumentals on the record are nice funky slices of southern soul including my faves “Pickles” and “Either” which has a really insinuating groove and features some nice sax work from Earl Turbinton and Fredric Kemp.
Two of the vocal standouts for me include “Sweet Touch of Love” which feature Clayton and Fields again…and “Everything I Do Be Funky” which was a hit for Dorsey years earlier. Also “What is Success”, which Bonnie Raitt would record a bit later is really nice.
There really is nothing special about Toussaint’s voice and yet the songs work as an entertaining, funky look at a guy who knew his way around the studio and finally got to have his name on the front of the record.
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