The Allen Toussaint Interview

My guest today is traversing the United States in a bus with The Preservation Hall Jazz Band. That's New Orleans but so is the salty blues and the Afro jazz that Ellis Marsalis and Harold Batiste have been playing for decades.

My guest came of age when labels began to define music. Race records>R&B but when Elvis started singing that music it became rock. My guest had to learn how to advocate in a metropolitan center, a gumbo of odd Meters and Native Americans playing funky beats, pulsating rhythms that echo with the sounds of Congo Square.

Sea-Side Records became the operation headquarters as my guest reaped the treasure brought in by younger bands playing his tunes. I think of Lowell George and Little Feat, Levon Helm and The Band and old Medicine Show buddy Mac Rebenack playing at The Blue Cat where the strippers would dance to Duke Ellington tunes.....@/)

His understanding of the industry allowed him to expand his musical repertoire and become a leader of Love Life and Faith. Those are two of the L's of the Jake Feinberg Show.

Albums on Reprise spoke of the Strut, hand to mouth relationships that some of us know. to sweet Louisiana soul from the bogs and swamps and fried alligator gumbo stew of The Big Easy with the Meters as his rhythm section playing a center of the universe boogie with danceable Southern Night after Night after Night.....

He has witnessed the music industry shrink into a small business, he's seen the infiltration of click tracks and the elimination of bleed through radio channels, shrinking live music venues and a new generation of musicians raised on electronic beats to pacify rather than inspire. Messages that denigrate as opposed to uplift. From the Sanctified Churches to the Mega Church.....it all rolls into one.

I'll Take A Melody Allan Toussaint welcome to the JFS