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One of Elvis Costello's many strengths is collaborating with musical legends and helping them make vital music again. He did it with Paul McCartney, he did it with Burt Bacharach, and now he's done it with New Orleans great Allen Toussaint, who wrote and produced classics like Ernie K. Doe's "Mother-in-Law" and Lee Dorsey's "Working In The Coal Mine."
Apparently Elvis got together with Toussaint at a New York benefit for victims of the New Orleans flood. Within a few weeks they'd written a bunch of songs together and started recording an album in L.A. and then New Orleans.
The River In Reverse is the result, and it ranks with the best work of either Costello or Toussaint. There are five co-writes, seven Toussaint songs and one new Elvis number, but the songs blend together so well you'd be hard-pressed to figure out who wrote what without the liner notes.
The production by Joe Henry is rich and warm, like an old record by the Band or Nick Lowe's first group, Brinsley Schwarz. Toussaint is almost without peer as a New Orleans-style piano player: his rollicking intro to "International Echo" is utterly amazing. Elvis has rarely sounded better as a singer, passionately delivering the Toussaint ballad "Freedom For the Stallion" and his original "The River In Reverse."
They are to appear together at the Orpheum on June 26 as part of the Vancouver International Jazz Festival: Be there or be square, as they used to say. The first edition of this album comes with a DVD of the album sessions.
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