[2016-06-10] Allen Toussaint "American Tunes" final album (Nonesuch)

Charles · 19 Dec 2007

Description
Nonesuch releases American Tunes, a new studio album by legendary New Orleans musician Allen Toussaint, on June 10, 2016. Toussaint had just completed the album when he passed away in November of last year during a European tour. Recording took place at two sets of sessions with producer Joe Henry: solo piano at Toussaint's New Orleans home studio in 2013, and with the rhythm section of Jay Bellerose and David Piltch—joined by guests Bill Frisell, Charles Lloyd, Greg Leisz, Rhiannon Giddens, and Van Dyke Parks—in Los Angeles in October 2015. The album comprises solo performances of Professor Longhair tunes and band arrangements of songs by Toussaint, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Paul Simon, and others.

Allen Toussaint's work as composer, producer, arranger, and performer, especially in the 1960s and '70s, helped shape the sound of R&B, soul, and funk as we know it today. He collaborated memorably with artists ranging from Lee Dorsey and Ernie K. Doe to the Pointer Sisters and Labelle, from the Meters and Dr. John to the Band and Paul McCartney. The New York Times recently said, "In Mr. Toussaint's long career as songwriter, arranger and producer he has honed a piano style that's supportive and allusive; a little trill or tremolo sums up all the splashy joys of New Orleans patriarchs like Professor Longhair and James Booker, and a syncopated chord under right-hand octaves summons gospel. Mr. Toussaint has the two-fisted, rippling vocabulary of the city's piano legacy, but he uses it in dapper ways."

Toussaint's children, Alison Toussaint-LeBeaux and Clarence Reginald Toussaint, who have long served as their father's managers, said of the American Tunes album, "Our father approached this project with great care and understanding of the songs selected and paid true homage to Professor Longhair, his musical hero. He wanted to bring as much of the Toussaint touch as he could to these wonderful classics."

Nonesuch previously released The Bright Mississippi in 2009. Also produced by Henry, the record includes songs by jazz greats such as Sidney Bechet, Jelly Roll Morton, Django Reinhardt, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and Billy Strayhorn. The album received tremendous critical praise, with the Boston Globe saying it "couldn't sound more like New Orleans. (Toussaint) revisits jazz classics … and takes them for a stroll through Preservation Hall, imbuing his own funky brand of pop-song charisma. The results are coolly sophisticated, an unfussy, mostly instrumental set of slink-and-slide joints shot through with a harmonic imagination that turns even a traditional hymn into an after-hours swing … Toussaint's musical soul guides all, making the classics sound like his own."

That project indirectly grew from Toussaint's contributions to Our New Orleans, the benefit album that Nonesuch released in fall 2005 to aid hurricane victims in the wake of the Katrina disaster. That collection opens with a version of "Yes We Can Can," the Toussaint song the Pointer Sisters made famous, newly recorded with producer Joe Henry, and it included a solo piano piece, "Tipitina and Me," co-written by Toussaint in tribute to Professor Longhair.

Joe Henry had first worked with Toussaint when he invited the pianist to join the sessions for I Believe to My Soul, a studio convocation of mature R&B stars. Henry subsequently acted as producer on Toussaint's post-Katrina collaboration with Elvis Costello, The River in Reverse. He describes the most recent sessions: "I have been working with Allen Toussaint—under his spell and subject to his influence—for a full decade now. He was a quiet radical, musically-speaking, and a prince of great humility."

Tracklist
1. Delores' Boyfriend
2. Viper's Drag
3. Confessin' (That I Love You)
4. Mardi Gras In New Orleans
5. Lotus Blossom
6. Waltz For Debby
7. Big Chief
8. Rocks In My Bed
9. Danza, Op. 33
10. Hey Little Girl
11. Rosetta
12. Come Sunday
13. Southern Nights
14. American Tune

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EBB3OA6/?tag=imwan-20

Charles · 19 Dec 2007

Quote:

http://www.nola.com/music/index.ssf/201 ... m_set.html

New Allen Toussaint album set to be released in 2016

Allen Toussaint fans, saddened by the music legend's sudden death on Tuesday (Nov. 10), may have their spirits lifted a bit by this news: Toussaint, who died while on tour in Spain, had just completed recording a new album with producer Joe Henry.

According to a release from Nonesuch Records, the recording "took place at two sets of sessions over the past several years: The first were solo piano recordings made at Toussaint's home studio in New Orleans in 2013, while the second, featuring a core band of musicians with several guest soloists, were completed in Los Angeles in early October 2015."

Nonesuch will release the album "sometime in 2016."

Toussaint's collaborations with Henry over the past decade capture much of the musician's late-career creative resurgence. Henry produced Toussaint's contributions to "Our New Orleans 2005," the post-Katrina benefit album, and "The River in Reverse," the album Toussaint recorded with Elvis Costello soon after the levee breaches.

Henry, an accomplished recording artist and writer in his own right, also produced "The Bright Mississippi," released in 2009, which found Toussaint interpreting classic jazz standards by Sidney Bichet, Django Reinhardt, Jelly Roll Morton and others. The music represented previously unexplored ground for Toussaint. According to a statement from Henry, released by Nonesuch, the still unnamed new recording builds on what "The Bright Mississippi" started.

Henry's entire statement on Toussaint and the new recording:

"Joining Allen over four days this past October in a Hollywood studio were the rhythm section of Jay Bellerose and David Piltch joined by other masters of understated invention—guitarist Bill Frisell; legendary tenor saxophonist Charles Lloyd; multi-instrumentalist Greg Leisz; the luminous singer Rhiannon Giddens; and the irrepressible composer/arranger/pianist Van Dyke Parks, who had a long friendship and collaborative relationship with Allen dating back to the early 1970s.

"I have been working with Allen Toussaint—under his spell and subject to his influence—for a full decade now. He was a quiet radical, musically-speaking, and a prince of great humility. In listening to all of the recordings these past days, reeling from the shock of his sudden death, it has meant so much to feel Allen's spirit, vibrant and undiminished. Allen's family, our friends at Nonesuch, and I look forward to sharing the music with the world."

Tricky Kid · **Joined:** 23 Sep 2007 **Posts:** 8297

Slam dunk of a lineup... this should be a really good album, not just posthumous barrel-scrapings.

Linda · **Posted:** Fri Apr 15, 2016 5:07 pm

Bump: Added the pre-order details to the first post.

Linda · **Posted:** Wed May 25, 2016 1:52 pm

Another sample:

[2016-06-10] Allen Toussaint "American Tunes" final album (Nonesuch)

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