Allen
Toussaint, the versatile producer, songwriter, pianist and singer who
was a fixture of New Orleans R&B, died after appearing in concert in
Madrid on Monday night, November 9, 2015. He was 77.
Alison
Toussaint-LeBeaux his daughter confirmed his death. Javier Ayuso, a
spokesman for Madrid emergency services, told The Associated Press that
rescue workers had been called to Mr. Toussaint’s hotel early Tuesday
and were able to revive him after a heart attack, but that Mr. Toussaint
later stopped breathing en route to a hospital.
In
concert, in the studio or around his beloved New Orleans, Mr. Toussaint
(pronounced too-SAHNT) was a soft-spoken embodiment of the city’s
musical traditions, revered as one of the master craftsmen of
20th-century American pop.
“In
the pantheon of New Orleans music people, from Jelly Roll Morton to
Mahalia Jackson to Fats — that’s the place where Allen Toussaint is in,”
said Quint Davis, the longtime producer of the New Orleans Jazz and
Heritage Festival, where Mr. Toussaint played almost every year since
the mid-1970s.
Mr.
Toussaint’s career began when he was a teenager in the ’50s and his
jaunty piano playing caught the ear of Dave Bartholomew, Fats Domino’s
producer. It continued to the present, with a late-blooming love for
performing live and collaborating with rock and pop musicians like Elvis
Costello.
Mr.
Toussaint had his greatest impact in the ’60s and ’70s, when, as both
songwriter and producer, he worked on records, like Ernie K-Doe’s “Mother-in-Law,” Lee Dorsey’s “Working in the Coal Mine” and Jessie Hill’s “Ooh Poo Pah Doo,” that described everyday pleasures and nuisances with empathy, wit and a loose, funky swing.
During
the ’70s Mr. Toussaint’s studio, Sea-Saint, which he founded with the
producer Marshall Sehorn, became renowned for recordings by the Meters,
Dr. John and Labelle, and attracted international pop stars like Paul
McCartney and Robert Palmer. Mr. Toussaint, then still a largely
behind-the-scenes figure in music, also found his way to No. 1 on the
pop charts in 1977 when Glen Campbell recorded a cover of his song “Southern Nights.”
Mr.
Toussaint’s inspiration, he often said, was New Orleans itself, and
over the years he became an unofficial musical ambassador for the city,
where for decades he maintained a modest home in a middle-class
neighborhood.
At
Jazz Fest, as the Jazz and Heritage Festival is known, he usually
performed in a bright and elaborately decorated coat. Even offstage, Mr.
Toussaint had an eccentric dandy style; he drove a Rolls-Royce with the
license plate PIANO and favored pinstriped suits and purple silk shirts
paired with Birkenstock sandals.
“It’s who we are,” Mr. Toussaint said of New Orleans, in an interview last year
published by the Red Bull Music Academy. “The food we eat, the history,
Mardi Gras Indians who rehearse all year around, the second-line brass
bands who strut that stuff, the syncopation, the humor, and the slightly
slower pace than the rest of America — the way we mosey along rather
than running the race.”
On Tuesday Paul Simon, with whom Mr. Toussaint was scheduled to give a benefit concert
in New Orleans on Dec. 8, recalled their long history together, which
goes back to recording sessions in the early ’70s, when Mr. Toussaint
played piano for him and wrote chord charts for his musicians.
“We
were friends and colleagues for almost 40 years,” Mr. Simon wrote in an
email. “We played together at the New Orleans jazz festival. We played
the benefits for Katrina relief. We were about to perform together on
Dec. 8. I was just beginning to think about it; now I’ll have to think
about his memorial. I am so sad.”
Allen
Toussaint was born on Jan. 18, 1938, in Gert Town, a working-class
neighborhood of New Orleans. His parents, Clarence and Naomi, were
songwriters. By his early teens he was playing piano with the guitarist
Snooks Eaglin, and he got his first break when he substituted for the
New Orleans bandleader and pianist Huey Piano Smith on tour in 1957.
The
next year, Mr. Toussaint recorded “The Wild Sound of New Orleans,” an
album of instrumentals released by RCA Victor under the name Tousan. It
was no hit, but it later gave him a taste of success as a songwriter:
One song on the album, “Java” — for which Mr. Toussaint shared credit
with Alvin Tyler and Freddy Friday — was covered by the trumpeter Al Hirt in 1963 and reached No. 4 on the Billboard pop chart.
In
1960, Mr. Toussaint became the house producer, arranger and songwriter
for the Minit label, where he worked with Irma Thomas, Aaron Neville,
Benny Spellman and others. After serving in the Army from 1963 to 1965,
he returned to music, establishing Sansu Enterprises, a publishing
company and group of record labels, with Mr. Sehorn.
The
sound that Mr. Toussaint developed in the ’60s built on the rollicking
piano style of earlier New Orleans figures like Professor Longhair, with
arrangements that melded deep R&B grooves with touches of pop.
“Allen was the crucible of New Orleans music,” said the producer Leo Sacks, who in the 1990s recorded a gospel singer, Raymond Myles,
who was later signed to Mr. Toussaint’s NYNO label. “Allen’s
call-and-response choruses were catchy and clever, his harmonics were
rich and gospel-flavored. And no one had his handiness with a hook.”
Many
of Mr. Toussaint’s songs would eventually be covered widely, including
“Fortune Teller,” which became a standard among British Invasion rock
bands in the mid-’60s; it was recorded by the Who and the Rolling
Stones, among others.
“I
was so glad when the Stones recorded my song,” Mr. Toussaint once told
an interviewer. “I knew they would know how to roll it all the way to
the bank.”
During
the ’70s Mr. Toussaint recorded three albums for labels under the
Warner Bros. umbrella, but the popularity of his style of R&B waned
with the rise of disco. He continued to write and record for independent
labels, and in 1998 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
After Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Toussaint’s career took another turn when he relocated to New York.
He began to make regular appearances at Joe’s Pub, the intimate East
Village nightclub, and recorded “The River in Reverse,” a collaboration
with Mr. Costello that was a response to the hurricane and the
destruction of New Orleans. He also toured with Mr. Costello, an
experience that inspired him to play concerts much more widely than he
ever had before, according to Mr. Davis of Jazz Fest.
“The River in Reverse” was nominated for a Grammy Award for best pop vocal album, but it did not win; Mr. Toussaint’s only Grammy was a Trustees Award, a career prize, in 2009. In 2013, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts in a ceremony at the White House.
In
addition to his daughter, Mr. Toussaint’s survivors include a son,
Clarence Reginald; a brother, Vincent; and six grandchildren.
