ShareThisBy JOEL SELVIN
San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Allen Toussaint never left New Orleans. He spent virtually his entire distinguished career playing piano, singing, writing songs and making records with other people in recording studios in New Orleans. Until Katrina.
"I just never found any reason to leave," says the impeccably attired Toussaint, sitting in his hotel room before a performance in San Francisco. "... Everything I hold dearest to me is in New Orleans, including the feeling, and the walk down the street and the way you wake up in the morning.... I get homesick at the airport on the way out."
As impossible as it is to imagine New Orleans without Allen Toussaint, the grand master of the city's immense musical heritage has been living in a tall building on the west side of midtown Manhattan since he left town in the wake of the flood almost two years ago. Still, he goes back every couple of weeks while he rebuilds his home.
But after having spent almost 50 years behind the scenes on classic R&B records, developing one of the most distinctly personal bodies of work in the annals of pop, drawing deeply from the endless fountain of New Orleans musical lore, the soft-spoken, uncommonly gracious Southern gentleman finds himself in the spotlight for essentially the first time in his career.
Before Hurricane Katrina, his live performances were almost exclusively limited to his annual show at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, backed by 12- or 16-piece bands made up of his crack studio sidemen, a group he could never afford to take anywhere else. Until last year, he hadn't toured since he played piano with '50s New Orleans rock 'n' roll duo Shirley & Lee ("Let the Good Times Roll") for several months when Ike was still president. He spent his career in recording studios in New Orleans.
But practically the minute he hit New York in 2005, all of that changed. Right off, he served as musical director of an all-star New Orleans benefit at Madison Square Garden. Within days of that, he was writing songs with one of that evening's guest stars, Elvis Costello. They followed their 2006 joint album, "The River in Reverse," with a cross-country tour that included a triumphant performance before a crowd of 70,000 at the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee. Toussaint also led the band at the end of last year's Grammy telecast, playing his "Yes We Can" alongside Costello, Bruce Springsteen and U2's The Edge, in the first prime-time TV appearance of his life. In New York, he has been holding down a prestigious nightclub engagement, playing Sunday brunch once a month at Joe's Pub in Greenwich Village.
For Toussaint, 69, a musician who has spent his life in the studio, performing his music outside New Orleans has been a revelation. He expresses surprise at how well the crowds know his music and the songs he hears requested ("Things I haven't thought about since the day we recorded them," he says).
"One other thing that's really interesting is the instant gratification of what you're doing," he says, "as opposed to me being in the studio and waiting for the red light, for the record to come out to see how it happens, whether they play it enough. But here you play something and there the people are. Right there. That is something else. It's a lovable situation."
Toussaint made his recording debut almost 50 years ago, fittingly enough, playing piano on a Fats Domino record while the Fat Man himself was touring Australia or some such place. He wrote and produced hit records on lightly comic New Orleans R&B classics such as "Ooh Poo Pah Doo" by Jesse Hill, "Mother-in-Law" by Ernie K-Doe or "Fortune Teller" by Benny Spellman. His long association with great New Orleans vocalist Lee Dorsey, who made his living running a body and fender shop, produced extraordinary records over the course of more than 10 years, including "Working In a Coalmine," "Yes We Can," and "Get Out of My Life, Woman."
Although he remained all but entirely unknown to the general public, despite a few brilliant solo albums in the '70s that never rose above cult status, his work has always been highly regarded among other musicians. The Band and Paul McCartney sought Toussaint's services for their recordings, but they had to come to New Orleans to work with him.
Toussaint says most of his musicians have returned to New Orleans now. One got married and moved to Massachusetts, he says, but comes back frequently.
"He misses the shrimp po'boys, I guess," Toussaint says.
He doesn't know how long it will take to move back to New Orleans. He has decided to completely demolish his home and rebuild on the site. His was one of the lucky neighborhoods. In Gentilly, where he lives, Toussaint says, people are staying in trailers in their front yards and rebuilding their homes, often by themselves. Other neighborhoods, not so lucky, remain abandoned.
He won't even say that he is going to continue with his newfound touring schedule.
"I can't say that, because once I get my place back in order in New Orleans ... I just don't know right now. I'd like to reserve that option."
(E-mail Joel Selvin at jselvin(at)sfchronicle.com)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)
