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In December 1971, Robbie Robertson of The Band invited Allen Toussaint to Woodstock to work on horn arrangements for the Band’s New Year’s-week concerts in New York. Disaster struck early: A briefcase with the New Orleans producer’s charts was lost during his trip. Then, Toussaint, used to the Crescent City’s heat, was struck by an ear infection as he wrote new parts in a cabin surrounded by deep snow.
“But he got through it,” says Robertson. “Allen went from this impossible circumstance to making something of great beauty,” creating the dynamic brass-party action captured on 1972’s Rock of Ages, one of rock’s greatest live albums.
Toussaint - who died on November 10th at 77 of a heart attack after a Madrid show - “was Mr.Cool,” says Robertson fondly. “He never dropped his guard. He was always in his groove.”
Toussaint was the most continuously successful triple threat in New Orleans: a producer, songwriter and pianist who sent the roots, blues and euphoria of his hometown’s singular R&B around the world on a six-decade run of hits and progressive-soul masterpieces, many of them with local vocal icons like Dr. John, Irma Thomas, Lee Dorsey and Aaron Neville. Toussaint was only 23 when he scored his first Number One single, in 1961, cutting the witty romp “Mother-inLaw” for Ernie K-Doe. By the end of the decade, Toussaint was the driver behind New Orleans-jukebox pillars such as Thomas’ “It’s Raining,” Chris Kenner’s “Something You Got” and the Dorsey classics “Holy Cow,” “Ya Ya” and “Working in the Coal Mine.” By the Seventies, Toussaint’s regional prowess - centered around his own Sea-Saint Studios and his crack session band the Meters - was an open secret, drawing a parade of admirers including the Band, Robert Palmer, Labelle and Paul McCartney, who made most of 1975’s Venus and Mars at Sea-Saint. “He doesn’t just write the songs,” Elvis Costello said of Toussaint during the sessions for their 2006 collaboration. The River in Reverse, “The guitar, drums, horns are all part of the architecture.” Costello said he got “wiped out just trying to keep up with his focus and intensity. It’s the closest thing in my life to being around a Duke Ellington.”
Born on January 14th, 1938, and raised in the Gert Town section of New Orleans, Toussaint was intently studying Professor Longhair 78s by his early teens and “mimicking everything on the radio” on his family’s upright piano, he said in a 2005 interview. By 20, he had recorded and co-written the feisty, down-home instrumentals on his 1958 debut. The Wild Sound of New Orleans.
An immaculately tailored man who wore suits even to the studio and conducted his sessions with gentlemanly firmness, Toussaint lost his home and personal music archive in Hurricane Katrina, yet he rebounded with determination, writing, recording and performing at a brisk pace right up to his death. Costello recalled telling Toussaint he was sorry about the songs he had lost, and Toussaint responding simply, “I have to write more.”
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