Well-established in the 1960s as a songwriter, producer and arranger, Allen Toussaint recorded three albums for Warner Bros. in the ’70s; these were the first two. Lee Dorsey was his main outlet, but songs he penned also became staples by such acts as Al Hirt, Bonnie Raitt, the Rolling Stones, the Pointer Sisters and Herb Alpert. When Alpert’s recording of “Whipped Cream” was adopted as the theme song for the hit television show “The Dating Game”, Toussaint received bountiful royalties allowing him to stay comfortably in New Orleans and to choose his career moves based on their aesthetic worthiness.
Toussaint never did much touring, and none of the three albums sold well (the third, Motion was released in 1978), but they have aged as gracefully as the man himself. Life, Love And Faith opens with the funky urgency of “Victims Of The Darkness”. From there, the set sounds like a goldmine of hits, though he charted none of them and the album was barely a blip on the marketplace radar. The dozen songs make for one of the finest, if most overlooked albums out of the Crescent City.
The title track of Southern Nights became a hit for Glen Campbell. Toussaint’s version has a shimmering quality to his vocal that is in keeping with a gently experimental strain running through the set. There’s nothing exceedingly modernist, but he was not afraid to use what burgeoning studio technologies had to offer at the time.
More often than not, the magic comes from Toussaint’s arrangements. His glissandos at the end of “You Will Not Lose” sound as inviting as city lights on a perfect summer night, underscoring the hopefulness in the lyrics and demonstrating his formidable piano skills.
The optimistic lyrics on both of these discs sound as relevant today as when they were written. Toussaint can be playful or serious, but his warm and humane sentiments are never forced, cloying, or preachy.
