But Ayuso says Toussaint, 77, stopped breathing during the ambulance ride to a hospital and efforts to revive him again were unsuccessful.
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“In the pantheon of New Orleans music people, from Jelly Roll Morton to Mahalia Jackson to Fats [Domino] – that’s the place where Allen Toussaint is in”, said Quint Davis, the longtime producer of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, where Mr. Toussaint played nearly every year since the mid-1970s.
“You just look back on what his contributions have been to the music of New Orleans, the music of the world”, WWOZ Program Director Dwayne Breashears said. He started his music career as a teenager during the 1950s, and released his first album – a collection of instrumentals – in 1958 under the alias Toucan. He often wrote them with a particular person and personality in mind, such as singer Lee Dorsey and his smile.
Hailing from a city know for its beats and rhythms, Toussaint was an American original who carved out a sizable listening audience, toured extensively and graciously offered arrangements and songs to other performers.
While Toussaint may have finally gotten his due in recent decades, he had been one of the leading lights of the fabled New Orleans R&B sound for decades.
Many artists, like The Rolling Stones, Jerry Garcia, The Who, Robert Palmer, Warren Zevon, The Doors, Ringo Starr, and The Pointer Sisters have covered Toussaint’s songs, and he will be remembered forever in the music industry. It basically says, ‘I know we can do this.’ As cliché as it sounds, that’s kind of what we need to be saying…
The song turned out to be a financial windfall for Toussaint.
Merlis has an even more public connection with Toussaint. “But that’s where we learned our songs”. In 2013 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama at a ceremony in Washington. The New Orleanian’s most famous album, “Southern Nights” (a song later covered by Glen Campbell), was done for Warner Bros. when Merlis was at the label.
Allen Toussaint was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, and in 2009 was made a Grammy Awards Trustee.
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Toussaint was a constant in Thomas’ life and quickly became part of her musical family. In 1985, together with Aaron Neville – lead vocalist of the Neville Brothers – co-founded the non-profit organisation New Orleans Artists against Hunger and Homelessness, according to the Guardian, in an attempt to help the poor and homeless population of his home town. I saw him get off the tiny elevator on the stage level of the theater, and the pain and sadness was writ large on his face. His parents encouraged his early interest in music, and he first played piano at age six. Toussaint was also a successful producer, helming such classics as The Meters Trick Bag as well as more offbeat records like The Mighty Diamonds Fire and Ice and Elvis Costello’s Punch The Clock.
