From the instrumentals “Java” and “Whipped Cream” to the country standard “Southern Nights” and the funky “Working In the Coal Mine,” Allen Toussaint has written music that has spanned musical genres and touched the hearts of several generations. And not only does he write the songs, but his performance of them has garnered him fans around the world.
From the instrumentals “Java” and “Whipped Cream” to the country standard “Southern Nights” and the funky “Working In the Coal Mine,” Allen Toussaint has written music that has spanned musical genres and touched the hearts of several generations. And not only does he write the songs, but his performance of them has garnered him fans around the world.
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Soft-spoken and modest, Toussaint is eloquent when discussing his songwriting and the music he brings to the people. He acknowledges the muse, yet understands that there’s more to writing a hit song than waiting for inspiration to strike.
“I don’t set aside two hours a day to write but I do collect ideas from wherever I am, whether I’m near a piano or an instrument or not,” Toussaint says. “I find myself collecting ‘scraps’ f ideas, I call them. One time I was in line at a hardware store and there was a guy on crutches in line with a little flask of liquor in his back pocket and he reached around over the person who was in front of him and said ‘hey, come on, give me a close-up, everybody wants a close-up.’ What a gem of an idea that was! In fact, it overshadowed everything I was there for, and I turned around and went out of the store and went home and wrote “Give Me A Close Up.”
Toussaint said he gets ideas everywhere, and when he can do so he writes those ‘gems’ down, along with a little bit of information about what was going on at the time.
“Just a little bit of that is enough,” he explained, “otherwise it would be a whole movie. So many times over the years that has helped me with the feeling of the song. It’s like writing down a phone number with no name. I try to put a name to that face of the moment. Later on I’ll go through those ideas and complete them.”
Toussaint’s interest in music started at an early age. By the time he was eight he was writing melodies. He began to put words to those melodies about the same time he hit his teenage years.
“The fact that I was writing songs didn’t amaze me because I understood that you could do that,” said the New Orleans-based singer/songwriter. “And those were very humble beginnings, nothing great, but I did understand that it was in us and you could go so many places with it.”
And when Toussaint went places, he took his listeners with him! Everyone from The Rolling Stones to Robert Palmer and The O’Jays have recorded his songs, and he’s written or produced material for Otis Redding, Ringo Star, Paul Simon, Dr. John, Three Dog Night, Esther Phillips, Lee Dorsey, Blue Swede, Paul and Linda McCartney, New Edition – the list goes on and on.
Toussaint expanded his horizons even more when he began writing for theatre in the late 80s.
“If I had to learn new, it was in theatre,” he points out. “Theatre is very different because most of us would like to wait on inspiration, and if the inspiration takes too long then we write because we know how to write. We write from skill as well as the inspiration. Theatre seems to be from prescription. There is something prescribed from text. There are certain things that are called for, which in one way makes it easier. When you are just writing for the sake of writing, you don’t know what’s coming but you’re glad it’s coming.
With theatre there is a story line and there are characters, so when the person gives you a character, they have given you a whole inspiration about that character – what they are like and what they are doing at the moment, and that’s really a luxury; you know there are certain things that are called for and in some ways that makes it easier. You have to reserve yourself a place, however, because sometimes you have to marry the book.”
Toussaint wrote the words and music for the stage play William Christopher, and was composer/music director for and appeared in Staggerlee. The latter earned him the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Music in an Off-Broadway Musical for 1986-87. He also was the composer/musical director for High Rollers Social and Pleasure Club, which he also appeared in, in 1991. The latter also earned him a nomination in the Outer Critics Circle Awards.
And speaking of awards, Glen Campbell’s version of “Southern Nights” received BMI’s Most Performed Song of the Year in 1977, and was the Country Music Assn.’s Song of the Year. It was also nominated for a Grammy.
His first solo album was recorded in 1958; his latest earlier this year. Title, Connected, it features some of Toussaint’s most recent compositions; interpreted as only he can interpret them.
One of the beauties of a Toussaint song is the music, and the creator was quick to agree that the advantage songs have over novels is that the music sets the mood for the listener, while the reader must determine the mood for himself.
“It is a wonderful advantage – I’d even call it a luxury, to set the mood for people, because if you do it well, you can set the mood with the music and in the title. If someone doesn’t want to hear the lyrics, you can play the melody, and it can say the same thing as if you’d sung the lyrics. It’s just a wonderful art that was given to us as another device for us to live with, to soothe our lives and aid us in our travels here.”
Toussaint has been called one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th Century, but he refused to comment. “There are too many great songwriters that I love, but I’m glad someone would put me in their number,” he said. “We have been given so much as writers and artists to receive life as we do, and to give it back to the world and paint our own humble pictures.
