Several years ago, at Jazz Fest time, I was working on an article about New Orleans musicianship, especially piano playing technique. I needed badly to talk to an expert and figured I could do no better than to get Allen Toussaint, the city’s famed song writer, on the phone.
There were two surprises. One, somehow, I actually got hold of his number. Two, he answered. For a man of his stature in the music industry, I was braced for the call to be blown off as another inquiry from a music geek but no, and this was surprise three, he actually embraced the topic. Piano playing was his life; what he wanted to talk about. He was cordial and tried his best to make sense out of a complex question. The conversation needed embellishment. That’s when he paused to offer instrumental examples. I had not realized it but the whole time we had been talking Toussaint was sitting at a piano. He was in his natural environment as he placed the receiver to the side and began to play different examples of New Orleans style. This was a motherlode. Forget about the interview, I was having a private concert, enriched by explanations, from Allan Toussaint. I learned something about New Orleans piano music from the experience, and a whole lot about Allen Toussaint, who was as classy as he was prolific and creative.
His profile of song hits – most written for others, some performed by him – included:
•All These Things
•A Certain Girl
•Fortune Teller
•Holy Cow
•It’s Raining
•Lipstick Traces
•Mother in Law
• Southern Nights
•Whipped Cream
•Working in a Coal Mine
All of these songs create sweet memories for somebody – some romantic, some humorous, such as singer Benny Spellman’s bass refrain of “Mother in Law!” dispersed between Ernie K-Doe’s lyrics about domestic frustration.
“Southern Nights,” which Glenn Campbell recorded, could have been made into poetry recalling warm evenings beneath stormy skies. While performing that song, Toussaint would drift into a recitation of youthful memories that was theater in itself.
Toussaint died suddenly Nov. 10, 2015, at 77, during a trip to Spain. Like everyone else who knew of him, I wish I had had a chance to hear him more often. I do remember my last memory and it was certainly an expression of his generosity:
In June 2012, the city was abuzz about the plans of the Newhouse chain to reduce publication of The Times-Picayune newspaper to three times a week. Besides the loss of news coverage, many of the publication’s employees were losing their job. A rally was held at the parking lot of Rock 'n' Bowl to help support the newly unemployed. Toussaint is a big star who could have commanded huge fees. This day he was a volunteer performing at a keyboard on a makeshift stage.
“Allen Toussaint has rescued the careers of many singers,” I would write, “but I never thought he would be needed to help salvage the Times-Picayune. There he was though, in the Rock ‘n' Bowl parking lot performing at a rally to save the newspaper from marginalization at the hands of its owners.
“Toussaint’s opening song, ‘Holy Cow,’ one of his many classics, summed up the situation perfectly, as though written for the Newhouse clan and their accomplices:
“I can't eat
And I can't sleep
Since you walked out on me, yeah
Holy cow, what you doing, child?
Holy cow, what you doing, child?
What you doing, what you doing, child?
Holy smoke, well, it ain't no joke
No joke, hey, hey, hey.”
“ ‘What’s going on?’ a truck driver who was paused at a stop sign asked as I waited to cross South Carrollton to attend the event. ‘Is there free music or something.?’ I explained that it was a rally to try to save the newspaper. “ ‘Oh yeah,’ he responded, ‘that three times a week thing, that ain't no good.’ ” Then he drove away.”
“First my boss
The job I lost
Since you walked out on me, yeah
Holy smoke, what you doing to me, me?
Walking the ledge
Nerves on edge
Since you walked out on me, yeah
Holy cow, what you doing to me, child?”
In January 2022, what was Robert E. Lee Boulevard was renamed Allen Toussaint Boulevard. There was never any real disagreement about Toussaint’s worthiness to have a street named after him, though there was at least one suggested alternative—Gentilly Boulevard. Toussaint lived in that neighborhood, plus at one point the street parallels the Fairgrounds where the Jazz Fest is held.
In terms of New Orleans musical legacy, however, all roads somehow connected through Toussaint.
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