#Allen toussaint songbook how to#
#Allen toussaint songbook plus#
#Allen toussaint songbook tv#

Straight away he launched into a piano blues medley before introducing ‘Night People’, a song he wrote for the late Lee Dorsey for whom, Toussaint said, he still writes, even though nearly 30 years have passed since Dorsey’s death.

#Allen toussaint songbook how to#

It had been the hottest day of summer so far in London, and when Allen came out to the grand piano he began by exclaiming ‘You people certainly know how to hang!’, talking about how much he’d enjoyed seeing people on the pavements, sitting outside bars and cafes. Allen Toussaint at Ronnie Scotts (photo by Benjamin Amure, ) So when I saw that Toussaint was making a rare appearance in the UK doing one of these solo shows I knew I had to be there.

#Allen toussaint songbook plus#

Songbook features Toussaint alone at the piano running through songs he’s written over the decades, plus a few New Orleans standards and the occasional autobiographical reminiscence by way of introduction to a particular song (most notably ‘Southern Nights’). Last year I bought Songbook, recorded live at Joe’s Pub in New York where Allen Toussaint had started to play regular solo gigs after Hurricane Katrina had forced him to leave his hometown. It was only in the 1970s, when reading the liner notes of albums by Bonnie Raitt, Little Feat and Lowell George, that I discovered that songs such as ‘What is Success’, ‘On Your Way Down’ and ‘What Do You Want the Girl To Do’ were authored by Toussaint – and that this was the same man who had been responsible for those hits by Lee Dorsey, Ernie K Doe and Benny Spellman I had enjoyed a decade earlier. Although I was not aware of the fact at the time, all these hit singles had been written and produced by Toussaint. It would be impossible to fit all of his most famous songs on one CD but our overview embraces several of his biggest as well as showcasing some beautiful songs that are no less worthy of great public acclaim.On Monday evening, waiting for Allen Toussaint to begin his solo set at Ronnie Scott’s, I recalled the times in the early sixties when I would lie in bed listening to songs like ‘Working in a Coalmine’, ‘Mother in Law’ and ‘Fortune Teller’ on Radio Luxembourg. The diversity of performers shows just how adaptable to all sorts of genres Toussaint s work is and offers an affectionate salute to his lyrical and melodic supremacy that has long been overdue.

The two dozen songs on Rolling With The Punches - a CD which carries the personal approval and endorsement of Mr Toussaint himself focus on a 20-year period that covers the 1960s and 1970s. In addition he either discovered or nurtured the talents of a raft of pivotal R&B acts, among them Aaron Neville, Benny Spellman, Irma Thomas and Lee Dorsey, all of whom recorded some of Toussaint's best songs. He s scored hits in every decade from the 1950s onwards and is still doing so in the 21st century.

#Allen toussaint songbook tv#

They have been used as TV themes and featured in film soundtracks. Toussaint songs have advertised everything from Coca Cola and chocolate to Boots The Chemist. His prolific catalogue boasts an incredible number of hits and Pop/R&B standards, and he might well be the only composer whose songs have topped the Pop, R&B and country charts at various times. Who is better qualified than Allen Toussaint to feature in Ace s Songwriter Series? Toussaint songs span seven decades of popular music.