Standards, Toussaint-Style - Contemporary Blues Men

Standards, Toussaint-Style

Standards, Toussaint-Style
June 4, 2009
By JIM FUSILLI
The Wall Street Journal

After an admirable career of more than a half century as an R&B and pop singer, pianist, composer and arranger, last year Allen Toussaint recorded his first album of New Orleans blues and jazz standards. Produced by Joe Henry and released in late January, "The Bright Mississippi" (Nonesuch) is a sympathetic, soulful, mostly instrumental work that quietly celebrates Mr. Toussaint as much as it does compositions by Sidney Bechet, Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn and Thelonious Monk. Last month, Mr. Toussaint came here to perform songs from the album during a six-night, 14-set gig at the Village Vanguard, the jazz temple.

Mr. Henry brought in stellar musicians to support the 71-year-old Mr. Toussaint, who's best known for writing "Yes We Can Can," "Brickyard Blues," "Southern Nights," "Working in a Coalmine," "Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley," "Fortune Teller," "What Do You Want the Girl to Do?" and other hits. In "The Bright Mississippi," Mr. Toussaint approached the standards with characteristic patience and panache -- and without jazz conventions and clichés. The CD is informed by his style, which has as its foundation his careful study of the work of the pianist Henry Roeland Byrd, who's better known as Professor Longhair.
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Listen to a song from the album "The Bright Mississippi" by Allen Toussaint:

When we met last month in New York, Mr. Toussaint reminded me that his childhood in New Orleans introduced him to all sorts of music. "I heard a lot of hillbilly, boogie-woogie, Lowell Fulson blues and gospel. My mother loved classical music. There were brass bands -- 'second-line bands,' we call them.

"But Professor Longhair was very important to me when I reached the age of reason," he said. "I didn't think of him as jazz. He had a universe of his own." Mr. Toussaint reinvented Professor Longhair's "Tipitina" on the 2005 multiartist album "Our New Orleans" and says he's recorded symphonic versions of many "Fess" compositions.

I joined Mr. Toussaint and Mr. Henry after a weekday afternoon rehearsal that the musician held hours before the start of the Vanguard gig. Though I arrived early in hopes of catching a glimpse of Mr. Toussaint working out arrangements, I got there just as guitarist Marc Ribot, drummer Jay Bellerose and bassist David Piltch were heading toward an elevator. All played on "The Bright Mississippi" sessions, and apparently not much rehearsing was required.

The idea for the album came from Mr. Henry, a terrific singer and songwriter in his own right, who once overheard Mr. Toussaint improvise off a Fats Waller tune during a break in a recording session. They met last year in New York's Russian Tea Room to discuss the project. "I said to him, 'How do we do something you've never done before and yet have it sound like you?'" Mr. Henry told me. Intrigued, Mr. Toussaint agreed to try. Mr. Henry selected the songs, which flow from the well that's New Orleans's music. There's a handful of tunes associated with Louis Armstrong -- "West End Blues," "Dear Old Southland," "St. James Infirmary" and "Long, Long Journey," among them -- as well as unexpected choices such as Django Reinhardt's "Blue Drag" and Monk's "Bright Mississippi."

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Michael Wilson

The R&B and pop legend makes his first foray into New Orleans jazz and blues.
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allen toussaint

The Reinhardt tune, Mr. Henry said, "is blues built on a tango rhythm, which I associate with the convergence of music in New Orleans. Musically, [the city] exists as its own country." As for the Monk number, it's built on a chord pattern suggested by "Sweet Georgia Brown." "I thought early on it would be great to hear Allen play Monk," he said.

For the recording sessions, Mr. Henry brought in the musicians, who -- in addition to the Bellerose-Piltch-Ribot rhythm section -- included Don Byron, Brad Mehldau, Nicholas Payton and Joshua Redman. He figured, rightly, it turns out, they'd respond to Mr. Toussaint's approach to the piano -- deep, graceful, understated, complex.

"Heavy as those guys are," Mr. Henry said, "they're all very much in the service of song. They're completely devoted to song."

Mr. Toussaint approved the tunes and players. "I wanted it to be a democracy," he said of the sessions. "The choice of songs -- they're absolutely wonderful. I wanted to live up to them. Once I started playing, I felt at home and comfortable."

Mr. Toussaint concedes he'd never heard of one Henry selection, the Strayhorn composition "Day Dream," which was recorded by Ellington saxophonist Johnny Hodges in 1961. In the "The Bright Mississippi" version, Mr. Redman solos on tenor over Mr. Toussaint's airy, melancholy chording.

Nor had Mr. Toussaint considered recording Ellington's "Solitude," a duet that closes the album. He casts himself in a supporting role as Mr. Ribot plays the melody on acoustic guitar -- until the bridge, when the pianist offers a solo ringing with the blues, resulting in a fragile reading of a song that Mr. Henry called "a perfectly realized piece of music."

At the Vanguard, during the fifth set of the stand, Mr. Toussaint gave plenty of room to his band mates. On "Dear Old Southland," he let trumpeter Christian Scott take the spotlight, while Mr. Bryon, on a tenor sax, shone on "Day Dream" and Mr. Ribot tossed off a solo in "Blue Drag" that Reinhardt would have been proud of. Mr. Henry stepped from the audience to sing "St. James Infirmary," and later Elvis Costello -- who was sitting with his wife, Diana Krall, and with Mr. Henry's sister-in-law, Madonna -- sang "Nearer to You" from the 2006 Costello-Toussaint-Henry collaboration "The River in Reverse."

Mr. Toussaint was in a playful mood, adding to "Solitude" a snippet of "Happy Birthday" to honor Mr. Ribot, who that night was celebrating his 55th birthday. The pianist slipped quotes from "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" and "The Trolley Song" into one of his solo pieces. After handing out Mardi Gras goodies to the audience, he offered a version of his "Southern Nights," singing over rumbling left-hand chords and twinkling arpeggios. The performance revealed how the blues and jazz had informed Mr. Toussaint's pop compositions and playing long before he took on "The Bright Mississippi."