By Tommy Stevenson
Tuscaloosa News
NEW ORLEANS — Allen Toussaint didn’t write every New Orleans R&B hit from the ’50s and ’60s, it just seems that way.
From “Mother-In-Law” for Ernie K Doe to “Ruler of My Heart” for Erma Thomas to “Fortune Teller” for Benny Spellman to such much-covered standards as “Steelyard Blues” and “Southern Nights,” Toussaint’s shaped the Crescent City sound.
Sunday he did a wonderful mid-day set on the last day of the 2007 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival that was blessedly free of the endless patter and band introductions that sometimes mar the piano master’s performances.
Instead he stuck mainly to his vast catalog of hits for other people, although he did throw in a quirky homage to James Brown, even calling out for “Maceo” for the sax solos, although Maceo Parker was no where to be seen. I particularly enjoyed “Life,” a song he wrote with Dr. John that was always a part of the late James Booker’s performances. Lines like “I’ve seen a moth with ten thousands teeth” and “I don’t know, but I’ve been told /About the work of the devil /And now I know,” were, I assume, the contribution of the good doctor.
Toussaint preceded Steely Dan, the quirky band that consists of guitarist Walter Breker and keyboardist Donald Fagen and an ever-changing ensemble of sidemen. Mainly a studio band that hit it big more than 25 years ago with “Ricky Don’t Lose that Number” and has been putting out jazzy-sounding albums every few years since then, Steely Dan does not tour that much and it was packed at the Acura stage for their performance with a crack 10-member band that included horns, two female backup singers and other musicians. My only disappointment was that they did not play “Deacon Blues,” or “Dr. Wu,” who was a real live professor at the University of Alabama (go figure). I even wore my Tide pin in anticipation of the lines, “They got a name for the winners in the world/I want a name when I lose/They call Alabama the Crimson Tide” in “Deacon Blues.” Oh well, it was a great set, anyway.
Other highlights of the last day at the Fairgrounds included eclectic bluesman Taj Mahal, whose performance began like a bomb going off in a packed Blues Tent, and The Radiators, who dished out a strong dose of “fish head music” to close down the Gentilly Stage. Da Rads, who have been going at it for 30 years and whose motto is “Too Stupid to Stop,” played “Suck The Head,” their first hit (the reference, including “Squeeze the tip,” is to how you eat a crawfish) and even threw in a swampy, funked-up version of “Mack the Knife” as an encore.
And for a little lagniappe, I caught the end of the set by Bo Dollis and the Wild Magnolias, the Mardi Gras Indian tribe, of which Dollis is the Big Chief, as I went to meet up with my own tribe at the light poll between the Gospel and Blues tents.
It was a fine day and fine festival all the way around. And now it is only 355 days until Jazz Fest 2008!
No comments yet.