Allen Toussaint

Allen Toussaint (1938-2015), musician. Allen Toussaint was born in the working-class Gert Town neighborhood of New Orleans. His early musical instruction came from his father, a railroad worker who also played trumpet, and from a neighbor who gave him piano lessons. While still a teenager he began performing with local stars like Earl King and Dave Bartholomew. In 1957 he entered the recording industry by playing on the Fats Domino song “I Want You to Know” and producing the song “Walking with Mr. Lee” for Lee Allen. Using the pseudonym Tousan, a year later he recorded The Wild Sound of New Orleans, an all instrumental album with songs that he had written. One of them, “Java,” was later a hit for Al Hirt in 1964, becoming the first of many Toussaint compositions that other artists successfully recorded. During the 1960s Toussaint became one of the most important creative forces in R&B and rock music, working behind the scenes as a songwriter, producer, arranger, piano player, and record label executive who found and developed new musicians. As he recalled many years later, “I never thought of myself as a performer…My comfort zone is behind the scenes.” In its impact on R&B music, New Orleans ranked behind only Detroit, Chicago, and Memphis. Toussaint wrote hit songs such as: “Ooh Poo Pah Doo” by Jessie Hill; “A Certain Girl” and “Mother-in-Law” by Ernie K-Doe; “Over You” by Aaron Neville; “I Like It Like That” by Chris Kenner; “Lipstick Traces (On a Cigarette”) and “Fortune Teller” by Benny Spellman; “Work, Work, Work” by The Artwoods; and “Ruler of My Heart” by Irma Thomas. When Otis Redding recorded the latter song as “Pain in My Heart” with slightly modified lyrics and himself listed as songwriter, Toussaint successfully sued him for songwriter credit and royalties. His music also reached a wider audience when white rock musicians such as the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, the Who, and the Hollies began recording them. One music critic later wrote, “Toussaint didn’t just play New Orleans R&B, he was the New Orleans R&B guy – an avatar for regional culture that skirted the mainstream but never really became it.”

In 1963 Toussaint was drafted into the army, but he continued to record while home on leave. One of his songs from this period, the instrumental “Whipped Cream,” became a hit for Herb Alpert and was used as the theme song for the TV show The Dating Game. When he returned to civilian life in 1965 he founded his own record label, Sansu Enterprises, writing and producing hits like the Chris Kenner song “Working in the Coal Mine,” a subtle protest against the exploitation of the working class. The rhythm section used on many Sansu songs was a band called the Meters, and their collaboration with Toussaint helped move his music in new directions that more fully reflected New Orleans’ unique cultural heritage, with a slower tempo and heavier syncopation than what was found in most other R&B. One early sign of this was the 1969 Lee Dorsey song “Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky.” The Meters eventually began making albums of their own, and Toussaint produced these as well as work by new artists like Dr. John and the Wild Tchoupitoulas. In 1973 he created a new record label called Sea-Saint and the recording studio Sea-Saint Productions. This studio was used by some of the most popular musicians in the world, including B.J. Thomas, Robert Palmer, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Joe Cocker, Albert King, Little Feat, and Elvis Costello. He also continued to write for other artists. His “Yes We Can Can,” a song about racial pride, became the first major hit for the Pointer Sisters; his “What Do You Want the Girl to Do” was successfully recorded by Boz Scaggs; and “Get Out of My Life, Woman” became a blues standard recorded by many artists. His biggest hit, though, was one that he did not write but produced: Labelle’s 1975 “Lady Marmalade.” In addition to this work with other artists, Toussaint began recording his own music for the first time since the 1950s with albums such as Toussaint (1971), Life, Love and Faith (1972), and Southern Nights (1975). His solo work earned critical praise but did not sell as well as when the songs were recorded by other musicians; for instance, in 1977 his song “Southern Nights” became a number one hit for country musician Glen Campbell. Throughout all of this, few people outside the music industry knew the name of the person who had written, arranged, and/or produced so many popular and influential songs. This was largely due to Toussaint’s unwillingness to enter the spotlight; “I’m not accustomed to talking about myself,” he told one audience, “I talk in the studio with musicians. Or through my songs.”

Toussaint’s success as a writer and producer diminished somewhat after the 1970s, but his work began to find a new audience as his beats and lyrics were sampled by the British pop group Sugababes and by hip hop artists like A Tribe Called Quest, The Beastie Boys, the Black Eyed Peas, and the Notorious B.I.G. His “Hand Clapping Song” has become one of the most recognizable samples in hip hop history, and overall his songs have been sampled nearly 900 times. In 1987 he served as musical director for the successful off-Broadway show Staggerlee. In 1996 he created a new record label, NYNO Records, which focused on New Orleans artists and issued a series of critically acclaimed albums. In 2005, however, Toussaint lost his home, his recording studio, and most of his other possessions in Hurricane Katrina. After taking refuge in a hotel he headed to New York, and a week after the hurricane he performed on the Late Show with David Letterman. He wryly referred to Katrina as “his booking agent” because it compelled him to begin performing live again for the first time in years. This included Festival New Orleans, which helped to bring tourism back to the city. In 2006 he returned to New Orleans to record the album The River in Reverse with Elvis Costello; this was the first major musical work created in the Crescent City since the hurricane. He moved back home permanently in 2009 but continued to give live performances around the world and to record albums of classic jazz and R&B songs. In his albums and his live shows, he increasingly saw himself as the conservator and ambassador for New Orleans’ musical heritage, sharing stories on stage about his half-century in the music industry. After one such show in Madrid in 2013, Allen Toussaint died of a heart attack. A year later his final album American Tunes was released. Before his death he had been inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, the Blues Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (becoming only the fourth New Orleans-based musician inducted into the Rock Hall) and had been awarded the 2013 National Medal of Arts by President Obama, who said at the ceremony that he and the other recipients had “used their talents in the arts and the humanities to open up minds and nourish souls, and help us understand what it means to be human, and what it means to be an American.”

©David Brodnax, Sr.