Key to the Highway 1-27-2016
Mardi Gras annual (Tuesday February 9th)
Allen Toussaint
Nathan and the Zydeco Cha ChasEarl King
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So,
is it better to do a Mardi Gras show 13 days ahead of time or one day
late? I’ll go for the earlier day just
to get you in the mood, so that is today!
I really want to accent Allen Toussaint on the show, not so much because
he passed away in November as because he remained relatively unheralded considering
the effect he had. And my Mardi Gras
annual is about the only time I throw in a healthy dose of Zydeco, and since I
have three quality albums by Nathan Williams I chose to give him a lot of
room. This does kinda leave Earl King
getting short shrift, but he does indeed make this a show I am very pleased
with. Let’s get it going so you can see
if you agree ….
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Reminiscent of the many chores Willie Dixon handled on
the Chicago Blues scene, Allen Toussaint
has been a major contributor to the vibrant Rhythm and Blues sound emanating
from the Crescent City for the past sixty-some years. His talents as a pianist and vocalist are
obvious in today’s presentation but if you look a little deeper you would
realize that he composed almost all the songs he performed, not to mention his
writing many tunes for the favorite artists frequenting the New Orleans
recording studios and beyond. Add to
that the fact that he was one of the most prominent producers in the highly
productive city and you begin to understand the impact he had for decades. Born on January 13th 1938 to Naomi
Neville, a member of what could easily be thought of as New Orleans’ royal
music family of which likely the best known being Aaron Neville (who could
actually sing when he wasn’t employing his falsetto style), Allen often listed
her name as the composer.
Even before he turned professional, AT (as I will
abbreviate Toussaint) was in a band with blind guitarist Snooks Eaglin, and
when Huey “Piano” Smith hit big with Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie
Flu in 1957, he inherited Huey’s role in the bands of both Earl King and
Shirley and Lee (Let the Good Times Roll, Feel So Fine). Also that year, he worked under Dave
Bartholomew, the dominant producer of the 50s, to play piano on some of fellow
pianist Fats Domino’s tracks. That same
year he had his first popular production with Walking with Mr. Lee by saxophonist
Lee Allen. A short list of his writings
would include Working in the Coal Mine (done by Lee Dorsey), Mother-In-Law
(Ernie K-doe), Ooh Poo Pah Doo (Jessie Hill), Fortune Teller (Benny Spellman,
then later by The Rolling Stones), Lady Marmalade (LaBelle), Southern Nights
(Glen Campbell), and my favorite Get Out of My Life, Woman (The Paul
Butterfield Blues Band) just to pick a few.
Other notables who recorded his songs were Otis Redding, Irma Thomas,
The Pointer Sisters, Ringo Starr, Joe Cocker, Bonnie Raitt, Johnny Winter, Little
Feat, Boz Scaggs and, of course, Aaron Neville.
Most of the first hour of today’s show is live music
to represent each of our chosen artists.
The opening set today comes from the 1976 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage
Festival, certainly the most prestigious annual concert in the Bayou area, and
AT was given the first series of tracks as well as the most time by any of the
eight performers on the disc.
The other two AT sets are from his first recording
sessions under his own name, although he made it a little easier by calling
himself Al Tousan. Alvin “Red” Tyler is
the baritone sax player but more than that he provided the young AT with stability
as he wrote or co-wrote with AT many of the tunes. Tenor sax alternated between Lee Allen and
Nat Perrilliat on the first album at least even though Allen’s name does not
appear on the list of players with bassist Frank Fields and drummer Charles
“Hungry” Williams providing the rhythm section.
Ray Montrell might be the guitarist on the first album, or it might be
Justin Adams. Melvin Lastie’s cornet is
on the Seville sessions.
AT became the producer for Joe Banashak’s Minit Records
in 1960 and he also freelanced with other local labels. Through the mid-60s he had hits as writer,
arranger, producer and pianist on several hits for locals Ernie K-Doe, Irma
Thmas, Chris Kenner, Art and Aaron Neville, produced Lee Dorsey’s first hit, Ya
Ya. Jessie Hill wrote Ooh Poo Pah Doo
but it was arranged and produced by AT.
Ruler of My Heart was released by Irma Thomas but Otis Redding changed
the title to Pain in My Heart which was soon picked up by The Rolling Stones.
His work was restricted to recording while on leave
after he was drafted in 1963, but after his discharge in 1965 he partnered with
Marshall Sehorn, setting up Sansu Enterprises which, over time, their label
created would be called Sansu, Tou-Sea, Deesu or Kansu. The house band for many of their sessions was
Art Neville and the Sounds (known as the Meters since 1969) with drummer
Zigaboo Modeliste, bassist George Porter, guitarist Leo Nocentelli and Art on
keyboards, often with horns arranged by AT.
He produced Dr. John’s 1973 LP In the Right Place and
an album for the Wild Tchoupitoulas, a Mardi Gras Indian band led by Big Chief
Jolly (George Landry), uncle to the Neville Brothers Art, Cyril (then also with
the Meters), Aaron and Charles. The four
brothers, combined with the Meters, made up the Tchoupitoulas. Out of town artists he he worked with
included B.J. Thomas, Robert Palmer, and Solomon Burke. He arranged the horns for two albums for the
Band (1971 & 1972) before doing the same for their 1978 classic The Last
Waltz and, of course, for their concert performances. The 1976 album Notice to appear was a
collaboration with John Mayall.
Sorry,
this is a very abbreviated entry but I just did not have time to complete or
even proofread it.
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Another whose contributions cannot be counted by the
times his name graced the front of an album cover or the seats he filled in a
concert hall would be singer and guitarist Earl
King (February 7th 1934 – April 17th 2003). “I think that one time I stopped performing
for maybe seven years to just write for other artists. Songwriting has always been my
priority.”
Earl’s mother, Ernestine Hampton, must have led a sad
life as the first six of her children died before they reached a few months of
age. Then her husband, Earl Silas
Johnson III (our Earl was #IV), passed away at at the age of 26 before Earl,
the only surviving child, was a year old.
His father “was just a stomp down honky tonk piano player before he went
into the missionary thing. My mother,
she was always religiously orientated.”
“Singing came quite easy, ‘cause I used to sing in
church when I was about six.” In
addition to singing with friends while he was in high school, Earl was putting
together some of his own songs, most notably Big Chief, the nickname of his
mother, which was later recorded by Professor Longhair. The true start of his career came at age
nineteen when he met Huey Smith, who was then pianist for the band of Guitar
Slim. Earl and Slim got along well (“Guitar
Slim was the performingest man I’ve ever seen.
He inspired me to contemplate a marriage between a song and its solo.”),
so, on June 1st 1953, they went together on 4 tracks each as both
made their recording debuts for the Savoy label. Two of Earl’s songs were released under his
real name, Earl Johnson.
Some months later, Huey was in a three piece band with
drummer Willie “Red Top” Nettles and altoist Lawrence Sutton, and they added
Earl as vocalist. As he was also a
guitarist, Huey recommended Earl take up the instrument. “Most people don’t know he plays guitar. See, he could play like Slim, when Huey plays
guitar, he plays exactly like Slim. He
knew I had an ear, enough to know how to deal with chords.” In 1954, as Slim was riding the crest of his
#1 R&B hit The Things That I Used To Do, he was sidelined by an auto
accident and Earl had to cover his touring gigs representing himself as Slim.
Earl got a release from Savoy and signed with
Specialty Records. The first release, A
Mother’s Love, was supposed to come out as by King Earl, but somehow the names
got transposed and he was from that moment forward Earl King. Earl put out three more singles for the
label, but because his style was too similar to Guitar Slim’s, now also under
contract to the record company, they gave him his release. Earl soon moved to Ace Records which was
recently begun by the agent who signed him to Specialty, Johnny Vincent.
Earl’s first 45 with the new company, Those Lonely,
Lonely Nights, was released in August of 1955 and the session included Smith
and drummer Joe Dyson’s band. The ninth
single for Ace, it was highly popular in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi and
could have gone higher than #7 on the Billboard R&B chart had Johnny
“Guitar” Watson not quickly covered it for RPM Records.
Our first Earl King set begins with two tunes he
performed at the Jazz and Heritage concerts the same year (1976) as what we
heard from Toussaint, the rest coming from the CD Earl’s Pearls, The Very Best
of Earl King (1955-1960), and he wrote or co-wrote its entire contents, a
talent Vincent was well aware of. “Earl was just a bitch of a writer. That’s what impressed me about him. He was one of the best young writers in New
Orleans. Basically, I thought Earl was a
real good act, too. He was a good
lookin’ guy who had a lot of stage presence.
When he played those dances down in Crowley, Lafayette and Opelousas,
the girls used to swoon right in the aisles.”
As the CD titles implies, Earl’s sessions for Ace went
from 1955 into 1960, when he began recording for Imperial in October and
continued there until November 1962. After
the initial success with Ace, nothing sold more than 5,000 copies and Earl was
growing frustrated. After a 1959 tour
with Sam Cooke, Dakota Staton, and Dave Bartholomew’s band, Dave approached
Earl in 1960 regarding Come On, a song King used as his show opener. (I prefer it here as the set closer.) “He said, ‘Earl, that song you did on the
show … that yours?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ Then Dave said, ‘Did you record it yet?’ I told him I did a demo of the song, but it
hadn’t come out. He wanted to know if I
had a contract at the time. I never
signed my option because I was stagnating there, so I was free. Dave paid me an
advance and we went into the studio to record it. We also did Slim’s The Things I Used to Do.” With high expectations for the two-sided
single, Bartholomew contacted Imperial’s owner in Los Angeles. “I wrote to Lew Chudd and asked him about
promoting the record. He wrote back and
said; ‘We don’t promote anything until it gets in the charts.’ I wrote back saying, ‘If it gets in the
charts, it’s already on the way up.
Ain’t too much more promoting you need to do.’”
From a 1983 interview, “Joining Imperial really gave
me a chance to go in a different, creative direction. It was a real eye-opener working for Dave
Bartholomew. He had an open ear to
production and he listened to suggestions.
We began to use different musicians in the studio. Even though rhythms were changing then, Dave
knew how to do things that were appealing, and not too far out in left
field. It was a real learning
experience.” Bartholomew, Imperial’s
main man in New Orleans, felt similarly.
“I really enjoyed working with Earl.
He was a hard worker, had a lot of ideas, and good suggestions that were
valuable. He was talented. I had a lot of respect for him.”
The sixties were the height of Earl’s success, not
only with his own releases of Come On and Trick Bag but, along with
Bartholomew, he wrote a couple of songs for Smiley Lewis. From 1955, I Hear You Knocking is a classic
tune covered by many artists including Dave Edmunds while 1958’s One Night was
grabbed up by Elvis Presley and run to the top of the charts before Smiley’s
version had any chance for impact.
NOTE: These
songs seem to predate Earl’s time with Imperial, so was Bartholomew already his
writing partner?
After Imperial shut its doors in 1963 was when Earl devoted all his time to songwriting and producing for the local labels, which did little to enhance his name recognition or his recording career. In the mid-60s Earl did a session for Motown and three of the tracks eventually were put out on the 1996 album Motown’s Blue Evolution. Atlantic taped a 1972 session backed up by Allen Toussaint and the Meters which met a similar fate. Toussaint released the title track as a single on his Kansu label, but the rest of the Street Parade album did not reach the record bins until Charlie Records finally released it in the UK in 1982. His album That Good Old New Orleans Rock ‘n’ Roll came out on Sonet in 1977.
Black Top would record three albums, beginning with 1986’s Glazed where Earl was backed up by Roomful of Blues, then in 1990 Sexual Telepathy with some of the tracks utilizing Snooks Eaglin or Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters, and finally A Hard River to Cross in 1993.
While touring in New Zealand in 2001 he was hospitalized, but by the end of the year he was playing on a Japanese tour. He continued to play locally until complications from diabetes took his life a week before the 2003 Jazz and Heritage Festival, so many of his musician friends were home to attend the funeral.
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Since it is still relatively new, I thought I’d
mention that KKUP is now streaming on the internet and, while it is still in a
developing stage, we have been putting out the word. I’m not all of that good with high-tech
stuff, but it seems pretty easy to access.
If you go to our website at KKUP.org you will see on the home page a
strip of options immediately above the pictures of the musicians the next to
the last option being LISTEN ONLINE. By
clicking this, it brings up a choice of desktop or mobile. I can only speak for the desktop but after
maybe a minute I was receiving a crystal clear feed. As already mentioned, this is still a work in
progress and we are currently limited to a finite number of listeners at any
one time. I mention this so you will be
aware to turn off the application when you are not actually listening. (I put the player in my favorites bar for the
easiest of access.) Now we can reach our
listeners in Los Gatos and Palo Alto, even my family in Canada. Let your friends elsewhere know they can now
listen to your favorite station, and while they have the home page open they
can check out our schedule.
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High LifeSweet Touch of Liberty
Brickyard Blues
Shoorah, Shoorah
Freedom of the Stallion
Allen Toussaint
Everyone Calls Me Crazy
Come On HomeHungry Man Blues
Stomp Down Zydeco
Bye Bye Little Momma
Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas
Mama and Papa
Trick BagYou Can Get Your Gun
Little Girl
I’m Packing Up
Those Lonely, Lonely Nights
Take You Back Home
Is Everything Alright
Those Lonely, Lonely Feelings
You Can Fly
Everybody’s Carried Away
Earl King
Whirlaway
Happy TimesTim Tam
Bono
Po’ Boy Walk
Nashua
Wham Tousan
Pelican Parade
Java
Allen Toussaint
Hey Bebe
Steady RockI’m Back
You Got Me Walkin’ the Floor
Big Fat Mama
Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas
Don’t You Lose It
Come Along with MeThe Things That I Used to Do
Love Me Now
Something Funny
Come On (Parts I & II)
Earl King
Your Mama Don’t Know
Everybody’s Gotta Start SomewhereAin’t Gonna Cry No More
You Got Me Baby Now You Don’t
In the Same Old Way
Mardi Gras Zydeco
Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas
Chico
Second LinerA Lazy Day
(Back Home Again in) Indiana
Allen Toussaint
