Visiting Allen Toussaint in NYC at Joe's Pub...

You see, I have this informal list of cool things to do, some practical, some less so, and occasionally I actually do one! G-Man and I saw Sarah Borges at Joe's Pub (425 Lafayette Street in Manhattan) a couple years ago, and when I saw in the New Yorker that Allen Toussaint was playing a series of Sunday brunch concerts there, I promptly added it to my list. That was over a year ago. The Village Voice voted Joe's Pub the “Best Excuse to Let a Single Venue Dictate Your Taste”. Newsweek calls the club "one of the country's best small stages" and New York Magazine raves “you never know what you’ll find next at Joe’s Pub, but you can count on the fact that it will be good, very good." A perfect venue to experience solo Toussaint, whom I catch each Spring at Jazz Fest, generally with a funky, kick-ass band to accompany him. Joe's Pub would be different, a cool, cafe society setting. The Reet was less enthusiastic, but like the late Lowell George, she was Willin (presumably without the weed, whites and wine)."

So we headed down the Merritt early Sunday morning toward Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to 1) pick up Garrett and friend Yvette for the show and 2) to see Bobby Dylan, G's new kitten who, according to G, is nearly as easy to understand as the traditional Bob Dylan.


Toussaint performs a series of solo Sunday noon shows at Joe's Pub several times during the year. Found this vid of Sunday's concert on Youtube: Get Out Of My Life Woman


As the Mardi Gras Man, Toussaint brought out his bag of gifts for selected members of the audience.


Post-concert, Garrett and Yvette pose outside holding Yvette's Mardi Gras gift.


Cheesecake anyone? We took Yvette up on her claim that Junior's in Brooklyn has the very best cheesecake anywhere!

From Wikipedia (so it must be true):- In the early 1960s he wrote and produced a string of hits for New Orleans R&B artists such as Ernie K-Doe, Irma Thomas, Art and Aaron Neville, The Showmen, and Lee Dorsey. Some of his songs from this period were published under the pseudonym Naomi Neville. "Ruler of My Heart", recorded by Irma Thomas, is one example; the song would go on to be recorded by Otis Redding under the title "Pain in My Heart". In 1964 "A Certain Girl" was the first single release by The Yardbirds. The two-sided 1962 hit by Benny Spellman, including "Lipstick Traces (On A Cigarette)," later covered by The O'Jays also had the simple but effective "Fortune Teller," covered by many 1960s rock groups including The Rolling Stones, The Nashville Teens, The Who, The Hollies, ex- Searchers founder member Tony Jackson and recently (2007) by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on Raising Sand. A significant early influence was the second-line piano style of Professor Longhair. Toussaint's piano and arrangements show up on hundreds of records during the early 1960's on records by Lee Dorsey, Chris Kenner, and scores of other artists.

Starting in the 1970s he switched gears to a funkier sound, writing and producing for The Meters, Dr John, and the Wild Tchoupitoulas Mardi Gras Indians tribe. He also began to work with non-New Orleans artists such as Robert Palmer, Willy DeVille, Elkie Brooks, Solomon Burke, Scottish Soul singer Frankie Miller and southern rocker Mylon LeFevre. He arranged horn music for The Band's 1971 album Cahoots, and arranged horn parts for their concert repertoire. Boz Scaggs recorded a Toussaint masterpiece "What Do You Want the Girl to Do?" on his 1976 album Silk Degrees which reached #2 on the U.S. pop albums chart.

Toussaint also launched his own solo career, which peaked in the '70s with the albums From a Whisper to a Scream and Southern Nights. It was during this time that he teamed with Labelle, and produced their highly acclaimed Nightbirds album from 1975, that spawned the Number One Hit, "Lady Marmalade". The same year, Toussaint collaborated with Paul McCartney and Wings for their hit album Venus and Mars. Two years later, Glen Campbell covered Toussaint's "Southern Nights" and carried the song to Number One on the Pop, Country and Adult-Contemporary Charts. Along with many of his contemporaries, Toussaint found that interest in his compositions was rekindled when his work began to be sampled by hip hop artists in the 1980s and 1990s. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.