RIP Allen Toussaint, New Orleans Musician
Allen Toussaint, the New Orleans producer, arranger, songwriter, singer and pianist, died at the age of 77, following a heart attack after a concert in Madrid on Monday night. His death spread on the news Tuesday morning, social-media tributes and remembrances from prominent musicians rolled out in great number.
He was due to perform in London this Sunday and in New Orleans next month with Paul Simon, at a benefit for a charity for the hungry and homeless that he co-founded in the city 40 years ago.
Toussaint the man was a modest character, known for his mannerly grace. Toussaint the musician was one of the great forces to shape the sound of American music in the second half of the 20th century.
His early proteges included the singers Lee Dorsey, Irma Thomas and Ernie K-Doe, and he went on to collaborate with some of the great names of rock, including the Band, Paul McCartney, LaBelle, Robert Palmer and Elvis Costello.
It was in the '70s that Toussaint also tailored the songs that fit him best as a solo artist. A run of three albums, 1971's self-titled, 1972's Life, Love and Faith, and 1975's Southern Nights that established his sound.
Over the decades, Toussaint has been awarded a Grammy Trustees' Award, induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the National Medal of Arts, and an honorary doctorate from Tulane, in a ceremony that also honored Dr. John no less.
In 2005, during hurricane Katrina, Toussaint formed his own companies at the start of his career and took firm control of his destiny. After fleeing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he spent two years exiled in New York. There he collaborated with Elvis Costello on an album about the disaster called The River in Reverse (2006), and his late-blooming career as a performer began when he accepted an offer to play a regular Sunday brunch session at an East Village pub. "I never thought of myself as a performer," Toussaint said . "My comfort zone is behind the scenes." In 2013 he collaborated on a ballet with the choreographer Twyla Tharp and received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama.
Toussaint was born in Gert Town, a district of New Orleans populated mostly by African Americans. Both his parents loved music. His father, Clarence, a railway worker, played the trumpet with a big band at weekends and his mother, Naomi, loved opera. As a child Toussaint became steeped in gospel music and, inspired by Albert Ammons and Pinetop Smith, learned to play boogie-woogie on the piano, before exposure to the records of another pianist, Professor Longhair, reshaped his ambitions.
His mother sent him at the age of eight for piano tuition in the junior music school of Xavier University of Louisiana, Gert Town. At 13 when he and a friend, Snooks Eaglin, who played the guitar, formed a group called the Flamingos, playing at school dances. At 17 he attracted attention while playing at the Dew Drop Inn in New Orleans, and deputised for Huey "Piano" Smith, a local hero, with the band of the guitarist Earl King. Soon he was recruited by the local bandleader Dave Bartholomew, Fats Domino's musical director and a noted talent-spotter. His first hit as a producer, in 1957, came with the saxophonist Lee Allen's Walking With Mr Lee.
Toussaint survived by a daughter, Alison, a son, Clarence, and six grandchildren.
Allen Toussaint, musician, born 14 January 1938; died 9 November 2015.
