Southern Nights

Well, it's the Toussaint holiday here in France: that dreary time of year when autumn is just starting to merge with winter and families place chrysanthemums on the graves of their predecessors. And since my November radio show is a tribute to the great singer, songwriter, pianist, producer and generally gracious individual who left his native New Orleans roughly a year ago for a celestial destination unknown, what more appropriate subject for La Vie en Albums than Allen Toussaint's Southern Nights?

It's a crying shame that his death wasn't marked by a special show to celebrate his life on the BBC. Only the cognoscenti appreciate that this modest man, in terms of the history of black music, was every bit as influential as Berry Gordy, Smokey Robinson, Gamble & Huff, James Brown and others of their kidney. There may yet be a documentary on BBC Four, but then I suppose the discreet charm of this delightful man wouldn't have been quite so discreet had he been as lauded as he deserved.

Even as a songwriter (although probably for contractual reasons), he often hid his light under a bushel: as his alter ego, Naomi Neville (his mother). Mr. Toussaint and/or Mrs. Neville wrote so many songs that it's almost impossible to log them. Even as a fledgling Music O'Phile, I encountered him subliminally as the author/producer of Lee Dorsey hits that were occasionally aired on Top Of The Pops. 'Holy cow, what ya doin' now?' Working in a coalmine, actually. Or sitting in la-la, waiting for my ya-ya.

No, clearly it wasn't profound stuff. He was keeping that, I should imagine, for occasional solo projects like Southern Nights and it's only-marginally-inferior successor, Motion. But when it came to hit records, my! could he churn them out. And the thing about the genres of New Orleans rhythm & blues and soul that Allen Toussaint did so much to popularise is that the lyrics are often little more than an excuse for that infectious, quirky and quite unique rhythm.

Jessie Hill's 'Ooh Poo Pah Doo' for example is pure pounding onomatopoeia. If it's still out there, you can find it among many other mini masterpieces on a compilation released by the Charly label in the late '80s: Mr. Joe's Jambalaya. I bought it as a cassette and duplicated it almost immediately in case anything untoward should happen to it. Certainly it was never allowed anywhere near a car, to risk being chewed and spewed by a cassette player.

The Mr. Joe in question is Joe Banashak, a local impresario who founded Minit and a stable of tiny independent sister labels, for all of which Toussaint became the sine qua non. He's there as producer, songwriter and/or session pianist on everything from Ernie K. Doe's 'Mother-In-Law' to Irma Thomas's southern soul classic, 'Ruler Of My Heart', which Otis Redding would modify to 'Pain In My Heart'. And, although you won't find them for some inexplicable reason on this particular compilation, Mr. T. was also responsible for Benny Spellman's 'Fortune Teller' (to be covered by the Stones and a million others) and, my personal favourite, Chris Kenner's delirious 'Land of 1,000 Dances', which even knocks spots off 'Wicked' Wilson Pickett's subsequent classic. 

After a stint in the army, Toussaint teamed up with music publisher Marshall Sehorn to found the Sansu organisation, which incorporated more boutique indie labels, for whom Toussaint continued to play, write and produce. The customary common denominator on records by the likes of the good Dr. John was a house band synonymous, like Booker T. & the MGs up in Memphis, with some of the funkiest sounds ever put down by a four-piece. The name of the eight-legged beast was The Meters and it was via the Meters – and albums like Fire On The Bayou and Rejuvenation – that I finally, at last, came to the shadowy maestro who pulled the musical strings.

By the time Southern Nights came out in 1975, as Toussaint's third solo ablum, the Sansu team had opened the Sea-Saint studios in New Orleans. Artists from far and wide were now coming there in search of the magic touch: the Pointer Sisters, when they were still a kind of retro black Andrews Sisters; that wonderful vocal trio, the Mighty Diamonds, for a misguided attempt to blend reggae with Noo Orlinz soul; the mighty Labelle, for the monumental 'Lady Marmalade'; and a whole host of disparate others, including Robert Palmer of all people. I heard the title track of his Sneakin' Sally Through The Alley LP at a small free festival in a former graveyard near the centre of Bath and thought, I've got to have this NOW! (unaware that it, too, was written by Allen Toussaint

for Lee Dorsey).

The modest Monsieur Toussaint openly admitted to being much happier behind the scenes, which probably explains why he produced so few albums under his own name. The irony is that he had a lovely velvety tenor voice and could play the piano as fluidly as his hero and R&B forerunner, Professor Longhair, and his contemporary collaborator, Dr. John. He had the studio set-up, a coterie of finest local musicians (including all four Meters) and, above all, he had the songs. The mushy dame to whom I'm married only has to hear the song 'Southern Nights' and she dissolves into jelly. She has never knowingly dissolved to Glen Campbell's jauntier hit version of the song.

Late of the Steve Miller Band, Boz Scaggs picked the beautiful ballad on the same side of Southern Nights as the title track, 'What Do You Want The Girl To Do?' to adorn his hit album, Silk Degrees, just as he had picked on Aaron Neville's fabulous 'Hercules', another Toussaint classic, for its predecessor, Slow Dancer. Goodness me, it's like a severe case of six degrees of separation. But then it would be difficult not to mention the name Allen Toussaint in the same breath as that of the music of New Orleans.

Southern Nights is replete with up-tempo funky numbers like 'Basic Lady' and the opening 'Last Train', moody soulful pieces like 'Cruel Way To Go Down' and the memorable ballads I've already cited. It also has the distinction of echoing its title track before rather than after its actual appearance, as a link between the penultimate and the final track on the first side. It all adds up to probably the finest example of his more personal and less commercial work.

One of those commercial songs goes by the title of 'Everything I Do Is Going To Be Funky'. Everything he did was also marked by the kind of style and grace that anyone who has ever seen the documentary Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together will appreciate. Although he never thought of himself as a performer, his performance on-film suggests not only a superb pianist in his own right, but a raconteur and educator able to illustrate so compellingly some of the otherwise indefinable qualities that make New Orleans rhythm & blues so magical.

The Smiths' 'This Charming Man' might have been written with Allen Toussaint in mind and it's no accident that another cultured man, the soon-to-be ex-President Obama, had the sense and judgement to award him the National Medal of Arts. How lovely that, for once, such an accolade came in his lifetime. Two years later Allen Toussaint died of a heart attack. He was 'only' 77, but what a packed and creative life he led and what a legacy he left.

Rufusized

I had a brief love affair with Chaka Khan. It didn't, alas, come to much. In fact, without wishing to sound too sexist about it, my ardour died somewhat after seeing her on an episode of The Tube. Dressed in fish-net tights and thigh-length black leather boots and sporting about half as much weight again as the already buxom 'wild child' with a huge ear-to-ear smile on the cover of Rufusized, she looked well, frankly rough.

As she sings on the album, anticipating her biggest solo hit, 'I'm a woman/I'm a backbone'. She sho' 'nuff was. And for a few years, Chaka Khan, Chak-Chak-Chaka Khan, was here, there and everywhere. She was the queen of soul during the interregnum between Aretha Franklin and... well, who is the queen of modern soul? Probably not Erykah Badu, certainly not Angie Stone, possibly not even Sharon Jones with or without her Daptones.

In any case, Rufus were more on the cusp of rock and soul, which made this album a perfect point of departure at a period of my life when my main focus was shifting from rock to black music in all its wonderful facets. A mixed-race five-piece band, they were in many ways the heirs to the throne that Sly & the Family Stone had recently vacated and the album is full of songs that feature hard rocking rhythms driven by the swirling organ associated with Sly's band of troubadours and the chugging wah-wah guitar passed on by James Brown. It's surely no coincidence that drummer André Fischer had been part of Curtis Mayfield's group, another pioneer of the soul/rock genre.

The Curtis connection is a clue to the group's origins: in the Windy City of Chicago, home to the Curtom label (and of course Chess and Vee-jay). Chaka, apparently, was an ardent young fan of the group and befriended the band's original vocalist, who persuaded the other band members on leaving them to sign up her young friend. She even stayed on long enough to coach the future star through the band's repertoire. Now that's what I call a friend.

At that point, the band didn't really look like it was going places. Their first album sank with almost no trace, but – in recording it and its successor in LA – they hooked up with a couple of Fischer's mates whose guitar and bass would give the band the funkier edge they needed for long-term success.

The apogee of the six-piece Rufus Mk1 is the infectious 'Tell Me Something Good', which was given to the band by Stevie Wonder when he heard them recording their second album in the studio. This remarkably generous gesture is reminiscent of Lennon and McCartney giving the Stones their first hit, 'I Wanna Be Your Man'. Almost as compellingly funky as 'Superstition', 'Tell Me Something Good' became a Grammy-winning million-selling hit single and in the process must have earned the group's benefactor a fistful of royalties.

The replacement chantousse obviously exuded star quality and the second album, Rags To Rufus, went platinum. I must have picked up on the surrounding publicity when Rufusized was recorded and rush-released the same year (1974). One particular first-year student spent too big a part of his parent's parsimonious financial contribution on a gatefold copy. Already by now the band was billed as 'Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan', which would serve, ominously, as the fourth album's title.

Rufusized starts and concludes with its two best tracks: the dynamic brass-infused 'Once You Get Started' (oh it's hard to stop), with Chaka Khan's utterly irresistible high-octane vocals, and the simmering Bobby Womack-penned 'Stop On By', whose relentless shuffling groove leads the tone-arm to its final resting place. In between, there are plenty of good numbers, mainly up-tempo and funky, including the instrumental title track that showed how the group could, for now, get along well enough without their star vocalist.

It certainly hooked me and from Rufusized I first went backwards to its less polished, earthier predecessor and then forwards to several later releases, including the Quincy Jones production, Masterjam, which is the only one of those later albums that would remain on my shelves. Part of the problem perhaps derived from the customary situation of the singer outgrowing the group. Internal tensions led to changes in personnel and, perhaps, to Chaka Khan's first, eponymous, solo album – which gave the world the immortal 'I'm Every Woman'.

The situation wouldn't have been helped by the fact that Chaka's solo efforts sold like hot cakes, while Rufus albums without her sank like mobsters in the Chicago River. Chaka Khan would return for a couple of albums to fulfil contractual obligations, but apart from the wonderful 'Ain't Nobody', they were fairly forgettable. Nevertheless, the divine Miss Khan and what became effectively her backing band would both earn nominations for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Chaka Khan would also go on to publish a co-authored autobiography, but such is the extent to which my ardour diminished over the years that I never bothered to investigate. I'm content enough now to listen to her belting it out on 'Once You Get Started', 'Ain't Nobody' or 'I'm Every Woman', that lithesome imp with a radiant smile that spoke of the vitality of youth and a self-confident belief in her future.