Allen Toussaint holds a special and everlasting place in American music. He was truly a Renaissance man. He was a producer, arranger, songwriter, singer, and instrumentalist and built and co-owned with Marshall Sehorn Sea-Saint Studios, one of the most important New Orleans recording studios in a town that defined American music. He was a man who wore many hats, but also lived many musical lives. He died in Madrid, Spain in 2015 at the age of 77.
For all his accomplishments and singular place in New Orleans music, his influence on and collaborations with a slew of rock artists is incalculable. His work with The Band, Paul McCartney, and Elvis Costello, among many others, alone, is significant. Even with all that, over the years, he has taken time out from his many activities to record solo albums. He recorded eleven studio albums, but they were spread out over nearly a 60-year period.
He recorded four of them during his most prolific solo period, from 1971 through 1978, and they are the ones that are most representative of his heyday. The best of the bunch may be his first for Reprise, Southern Nights, after his first major label album Life, Love and Faith in 1972 on Warner Bros. That Reprise album, Southern Nights, released in 1975, captured the unmistakable mix of styles that was the key to his ubiquitous place in music in that period.
The album has a variety of strains coursing through its musical bloodstream and was somewhat of a concept album in that it brought together all the various musical styles of Toussaint’s Louisiana upbringing. The way short instrumental pieces are intertwined on the album and in some cases repeated as a musical motif or theme contribute greatly to the conceptual or thematic approach. There are of course all the ingredients for a gumbo of New Orleans music, but also funk, soul, pop, and more.
Toussaint is ably assisted by some of the cream of New Orleans musicians including Art Neville and members of Neville’s other band, outside of the Neville Brothers, The Meters. They are George Porter Jr, Leo Nocentelli, and Joseph “Ziggy” Modeliste. Toussaint arranged the album and co-produced it with Sehorn.
Even those unfamiliar with Toussaint’s solo works or even his work as a producer will recognize two songs here as definitive ’70s hits. They are the title cut “Southern Nights,” a hit for Glen Campbell in 1977, and “What Do You Want The Girl To Do,” an FM turntable hit in the ’70s from the monster 1976 Boz Scaggs album Silk Degrees and the only song on that album not written by Scaggs or his collaborator David Paich. Bonnie Raitt also interpreted “What Do You Want the Girl to Do,” but renamed it “What Do You Want the Boy to Do,” on her album Home Plate in 1975.
The album is one of the first two releases from a new Rhino reissue series, “Rhino Reserve.” These 180-gram vinyl records were cut from the original analog tape lacquers by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering. Vinyl is the only way to listen to this music and to feel the simmering musical stew emanating from the grooves.
This is a crucial album of New Orleans music from one of the masters and a must-have for any serious collector of the best American music. It will be interesting to see what further albums are released from this new series, yet another new part of the long-running, ever-growing and successful Rhino reissue editions.
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