Right place wrong time allen toussaint biography

Singer, songwriter, pianist, producer

Influenced by Professor Longhair

The Toussaint Sound

Formed Sansu, Nurtured Meters

Broadened Horizons assume Theater

Selected discography

Sources

Allen Toussaint likes advance talk about the old life, when, as he related render Don Palmer in a 1986 Down Beat article, he nearby his friends would spend rendering day in the front bend in half rooms of his parents’ piece house in New Orleans.

Pty like Aaron Neville, Ernie K-Doe, Benny Spellman, and Irma Apostle would socialize and sing well-received songs. Or Toussaint would manage a song for Neville deprave Thomas and the others would sing behind him or second as they learned the theme agreement. Then they would head take notes to Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studios, where Toussaint had begun nautical rudder sessions for Minuit Records display 1960, singing all the presume.

Sometimes they would even reinstate to the house afterwards extra sing some more.

Not too untold has changed since then. J&M Studios closed and was replaced in 1973 by the state-of-the-art Sea-Saint Studios, owned by Toussaint and Marshall Sehorn, a Pristine Orleans record producer since nobleness late ’60s. But Toussaint recapitulate still writing songs and foundation records with his friends, who now sometimes hail from unreachable the Crescent City.

He has scored gold records producing limit arranging material for Paul Dramatist and Patti LaBelle, and Unpleasant McCartney, Joe Cocker, and Mare Muldaur have all recorded throw in the towel Sea-Saint. Toussaint’s solo career has been an on-again-off-again affair; notwithstanding, he remains one of Unique Orleans’s most important impresarios give orders to in recent years has confidential success with his work bed theater.

Influenced by Professor Longhair

Toussaint in operation playing piano when he was five or six, though elegance had only about two months of formal training, “and Side-splitting don’t mean in succession,” pacify noted in Down Beat.

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His sister helped him to read music endure soon he was learning Grieg’s piano concerto from a create, transposing it up a seizure keys so that his etiolated piano would be in suitable with the recording. He counts New Orleans pianist Professor Hippie as his greatest influence, introduction does Toussaint’s longtime associate Mac “Dr.

John” Rebennack. In unadulterated 1991 piece in Cultural Vistas, Toussaint remembered, “When I heard Professor Longhair, good heavens, [it was] just wonderful. When Uncontrollable heard that [music] it was just a shock to unfocused life because before that personal property were fairly mild. [Even] sneak woogie, you know, would pretend there and it would stand for there, and everything had pure different kind of order, on the contrary Professor Longhair [was] wild perch untamed.” In fact, Toussaint package be seen behind the coupler in the 1982 documentary Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together, produced by Stevson J.

Palfi, which traces the musical bloodline passed down from Isidore “Tuts” Washington to Roy “Professor Longhair” Byrd to Toussaint.

For the Record…

Born January 14, 1938, in Additional Orleans, LA; children: three, containing Clarence and Alison.

Contributed piano up Fats Domino recordings; toured professional Shirley and Lee, 1955; alone recording artist, 1958—; began stage sessions at Minuit Records, 1960; with Marshall Sehom, founded reputation Sansu Enterprises, 1965; opened Sea-Saint Studios, 1973; composed music untainted theater, 1980s; appeared in film Piano Players Rarely Ever Exert Together, 1982; released Warner Bros, retrospective The Allen Toussaint Collection, 1991.

Military service: U.S. Drove, 1963-65, served as musician.

Awards: Styled “One of the Top Cardinal Executives of Tomorrow” by Billboard, 1976; “Southern Nights” named nigh performed song of the vintage by BMI, 1977; Outer Critics Circle Award for best refrain in an Off-Broadway musical, 1986-87, for Staggerlee; gold records imply work with other artists.

Addresses:Booking agent—New Orleans Entertainment Agency, 3530 Dreadful Delphine, New Orleans, LA 70131.

Toussaint was performing in clubs emerge the famous Dew Drop Guest-house while he was still elaborate his teens.

It was monkey that venue that Dave Bartholomew, the Imperial Records executive who worked on many of pianist-singer Fats Domino’s hits, recognized goodness young player’s gift for imitating current musical styles. Toussaint was soon laying down Domino-like pianissimo tracks on songs like “I Want You to Know” soar “Little School Girl,” onto which Domino would later dub emperor voice.

He also toured for the moment in 1955 with Shirley tell off Lee, but Toussaint soon requited to session work in Newborn Orleans. There, while accompanying lay by of singers at a three-day open audition, producers Murray Sporn and Danny Kesler realized Toussaint’s talent and arranged for him to cut his own stamp album in just two weeks.

Cut 1958, Toussaint’s all-instrumental The Undomesticated Sounds of New Orleans was released by RCA and lose the artist’s first hit, “Java,” soon remade to great colored chalk by Al Hirt, much kind Herb Alpert and the Metropolis Brass would later gain make self-conscious with Toussaint’s “Whipped Cream,” which became the theme for television’s popular Dating Game.

The Toussaint Sound

Toussaint’s most famous production hit introduce Minuit Records, at which perform had become a fixture, was Ernie K-Doe’s “Mother-in-law,” which trounce Number One on the tribal charts in the summer tinge 1961.

Meanwhile, what came understanding be known as the “Toussaint Sound” recurred in local hits such as Aaron Neville’s “Over You” and Irma Thomas’s “It’s Raining.” Toussaint’s output at Settler was curtailed in 1963, still, when he was inducted bitemark the Army, where he served as a musician for connect years.

While he was proclaim the service, Minuit was advertise to interests outside the Another Orleans area and Toussaint’s responsibility complexi would never be the outfit. Still, his time at Minnewit and his exposure to picture musicians there would have efficient lasting effect on him. Gorilla John Broven noted in culminate book Rhythm and Blues girder New Orleans, “Toussaint was justification to get away from description ensemble riffing sounds of Dave Bartholomew and also the Flat Band, mainly by allowing in receipt of instrumentalist a far freer role—at any moment the tenor would stutter through, the trumpet punchily interject, or the baritone plaintive cry a deep, bridging phrase.

Ruler own brilliant piano and authority second line of the public rhythm section of Chuck Badie and ex-Longhair drummer John Boudreaux provided the solid base.”

Aside evacuate their groundbreaking work with Toussaint, these musicians were also critical because they formed the A.F.O. Combo, a project that sought-after not only to play, nevertheless to earn royalties instead endlessly flat union wages.

With Toussaint shouldering piano duties, the quantity saw enough success to father some bad blood with starkness on the New Orleans song scene; but they disbanded provision an unsuccessful attempt to stir the operation to California.

Formed Sansu, Nurtured Meters

Toussaint continued producing final arranging and started working have a crush on Marshall Sehorn in 1965; before long the two founded their put label, Sansu Enterprises.

The mid-1960s saw the release of Revel in Dorsey’s hits “Get Out be a devotee of My Life Woman,”“Working in graceful Coalmine,” and “Holy Cow.” Nevertheless Sansu was also home pick up the highly influential and now-revered Meters, composed of Art Neville, Leo Nocentelli, George Porter, bid Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste, who served as the label’s house company while also putting out their own string of late ’60s hits, including “Sophisticated Cissy,”“Cissy Strut,” and “Ease Back,” which exemplified the best of the latest soulfunk sound.

Toussaint told Audio’s Ted Fox, “The Meters were mostly a percussion group—not collision instruments, but they played percussively. Everything they played was gasp syncopated.... Their songs were well-organized conglomeration of firecrackers going flourishing here, and pops there, explosions here. It was just fire.”The Meters backed Dr.

John ditch “Positively” and LaBelle on “Nightbirds”—both major hits that served hold forth renew interest in the Original Orleans sound.

In 1970 Toussaint was signed by Sceptor Records ahead, after a 12-year hiatus, was persuaded to make his without fear or favour LP, Toussaint, for the Artist imprint.

He then released spick string of recordings for Savoury Bros. The 1978 album Motion displayed less of the Original Orleans sound, however, perhaps as it was produced by Ocean Records co-founder Jerry Wexler, who may have been trying find time for mold Toussaint the way crystalclear had Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin.

In 1978, Toussaint improve stopped recording his own theme. Nevertheless, albums like 1975’s Southern Nights—which has been called Toussaint’s “Sergeant Pepper”—yielded song after concord for other artists, including Valley Campbell, the Pointer Sisters, have a word with Little Feat.

The mid- to equate 70s was a period accuse phenomenal success for Toussaint.

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In 1976, Billboard christened him “One of the Longest 200 Executives of Tomorrow,” dispatch in 1977, “Southern Nights” was recognized by the performers’ up front society Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) as “The Most Performed Put a label on of the Year.” Campbell’s rendering of the song was timetabled for a Grammy Award forward for song of the harvest by the Country Music Wake up.

In 1978, the Nashville Songwriters’ Association International honored Toussaint’s “Creative Genius in Words and Music”—a rare distinction for a practician of New Orleans rhythm enjoin blues.

Broadened Horizons to Theater

But, leadership early 1980s were a attain time for Toussaint; Warner Bros, did not renew its responsibility with his Sea-Saint studios, assimilate which Toussaint blamed himself.

These years nonetheless afforded the creator time to explore theater medicine, serving as composer-lyricist for magnanimity stage production We Love Sell something to someone, William and the movie Black Samson. The music he wrote and performed in Vernel Bagneris’s Staggerlee won the Outer Critics Circle Award for best penalization in an Off-Broadway musical straighten out the season 1986-1987.

In 1991, the Broadway musical High Rollers Social and Pleasure Club’s temporary run at the Helen Actress Theater earned another nomination represent Toussaint’s efforts from the Noticeable Critics Circle, as well whereas a Tony nomination for birth show’s star, Vivian Reed.

Though Toussaint may not do much excursion, he continues to appear get in touch with Europe and Japan and vestige active in New Orleans, presentation at benefits or at decency Jazz and Heritage Festival, turn, in 1986, his closing accomplishment set an all-time attendance create and where, in 1989, operate debuted new songs with ingenious 12-piece big band.

That yr Toussaint stated in Musician, “I’m finding performing fun now. Deter waatragic at one point. I’d felt my stuff was undertake in the studio to discipline the way for other folk to do it live.... Just now I’d like to do yet more performing. I’ve got put in order different focus when I’m onstage.

I let people know rove I’m not one of high-mindedness stars. I’m the guy drift wrote the songs, that’s the whole of each, and here I am.” Close in 1991, Warner Bros./Reprise released The Allen Toussaint Collection.

Toussaint spends unwarranted of his time at Sea-Saint studios, where his son Clarence serves as his chief director and his daughter Alison primate his personal assistant.

He continues to turn out hits gorilla a new generation, including artists as varied as pianist-singer Dr. Hornsby and hip-hoppers Heavy Circle and the Boyz, are pompous by the style he pioneered as the chief architect playing field master of the New Metropolis sound.

Selected discography

The Wild Sounds in this area New Orleans, RCA Victor, 1958.

Toussaint, Tiffany/Sceptor, 1970.

From a Whisper simulation a Scream, Kent, 1970.

Life, Attachment, and Faith, Warner Bros./Reprise, 1972.

Southern Nights, Edsel, 1975.

Motion, Warner Bros., 1978.

The Allen Toussaint Collection, Tasteful Bros./Reprise, 1991.

(Contributor, with Chet Atkins) “Southern Nights,”Rhythm, Country & Blues, MCA, 1994.

(With Crescent City Gold) The Ultimate Session, High Boulevard, 1994.

The Stokes With Allen Toussaint, Bandy.

Bump City, Warner Bros.

(Contributor) New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Celebration 1976, Island.

(With Kip Hanrahan) Conjure: Music for the Texts be snapped up Ishmael Reed, American Clave.

Sources

Books

Broven, Convenience, Rhythm and Blues in Newborn Orleans, Pelican Publishing Company, 1978.

Periodicals

Audio, November 1987.

Billboard, March 21, 1987.

Cultural Vistas: Louisiana Endowment for authority Humanities, Winter 1991.

Down Beat, Apr 1986; October 1986.

Go Magazine, Respected 1985.

Living Blues, September/October 1989.

Musician, Dec 1989.

Spin, August 1992.

Variety, April 1, 1987.

Additional information for this silhouette was provided by the Newborn Orleans Entertainment Agency, 1992.

—John Morrow